


Knights

by Yve



Category: Rune Factory, Rune Factory 4
Genre: D&N timeline, Depression, Developing Friendships, Noradian Knighthood, Other, Pre-game timeline, Trauma, Violence, Wartime, character backstory, some sexual content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4283001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yve/pseuds/Yve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Bado came to live in Selphia under the wing of the divine dragon of wind, he was a legendary knight of the Noradian knighthood. His friendship to his mentor, Knight Commander Tristan Starson, was all that got him through his days as a soldier in the war against the Empire. From the first day the overgrown dwarf set foot in a war camp, Tristan watched over him, eventually arranging for his friend to be settled in Selphia next door to his own wife, Lily, and their children Forte & Kiel. But, even with Tristan's guidance and support, the road changed and shaped the dwarf drastically, marking him with scars both visible and otherwise for the rest of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Stray

**Author's Note:**

> This story describes the formative events of Bado's adult life leading up to the adoption of his current role and life in the castle town of Selphia. From the canonical in game dialogue and events we know Bado was very close to Forte and Kiel's dad, and adopted the pair, becoming their legal guardian after the passing of their parents. We know that Tristan was Ventuswill's dragon knight up until he died and Forte took over for him. And of course, we know Bado was also a knight, famous and skilled enough to be called a 'Legendary Knight'. This tale will connect the dots and fill in the blanks, explaining how things came to be as they are by the time Frey comes falling out of the sky onto Ventuswill's head. I have invented the characters of Forte and Kiel's parents, Tristan and Lily Starson, as well as a few others to fill minor roles in the story. Mostly this deals with Bado's backstory and character development through the eyes of his mentor, Tristan.
> 
> It should also be noted that this story takes place in the Dwarf & Nymph timeline, years before the beginning of that story, which you can read [Here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1584671/chapters/3366875)

Candlelight flickered on the canvas walls of the faded Prussian blue captain’s tent, bathing its solitary occupant in the faint golden light of the miniature flame. Upon the makeshift table he’d assembled out of a sawhorse and a sizable piece of a barn door he and his company had salvaged, there sat a small inkwell, a pile of neatly folded letters, already opened and read, and a fresh piece of paper. The well-shaped, masculine hand of the Knight Commander of the seventh royal infantry company of the Noradian Knighthood hovered over the page, quill poised to scratch out his words on the surface of the page… but he did not touch the nib to the parchment. He frowned at the blank space upon the paper beneath the lines near the top that read: “Dearest Lily,” minutes passed and still he sat, motionless and pensive. Finally, after several nearly begun sentences, he gave in with a sigh and replaced the quill upright in the inkwell for the moment. The commander leaned back on the folding camp chair and crossed his arms with a sigh.

It wasn’t that he did not wish to write this latest letter to his beloved wife, Lily, where he had settled her in Selphia, but when it came down to it… he did not know what to write, this time. He adored every word of her letters and treasured them, carrying dozens in his trunk despite the difficulty of having it hauled in a cart everywhere his company of soldiers went.

Their infant daughter, Forte, occupied the bulk of Lily’s letters, always full of exciting firsts in the life of the baby girl. Having been granted furlough only long enough to be there for the birth of his daughter and see to it his wife was safely and comfortably settled into her new home, Tristan bitterly regretted missing his little girl’s early milestones. But, there was little that could be done about it other than what they already did, writing letters full of love back and forth, so he bore with his absence from them as best he could and they did the same. After all, if soldiers like himself didn’t fight against the Empire, who would ensure his home would not soon become trampled beneath their boots? Who would keep his wife and infant child safe from the tyranny and destruction a conquering army would commit upon them if he would not? No, there was nothing for it but to just keep writing letters until such a time as when the war was over or his time in the service concluded.

But true though it may be, that thought did not avail him in finding a topic to write about. Soldiery was, when it came right down to it, a miserable occupation, full of many very tangible discomforts and only a half-teaspoon of the intangible reward of fighting for one’s principles. Yes, it was the right thing to do. Yes there was honor and glory and fame to be had by some. And yes, he made a better career soldier than most, but that did not do anything to undo the fact that soldiering for most people meant a severely dangerous and terrifying trial full of near-death incidents and virtually no comforts or security at all.

What would his sweet wife gain from reading of such things? Surely it would not make her any more sanguine about his absence and his duties, to know how every battle piled wounded and dead at his feet as this abominable war dragged on and on. Would it comfort her to hear of the illnesses that ravaged through the camps, adding to the casualties men who were slain by viruses and infections before the gore and terror of the battlefield had the chance to break them?

He sighed again. Try as he might, he just couldn’t figure on any topic domestic enough to be appropriate for her eyes, and so he rose, stretched, blew out the candle, and walked out of his tent into the dim, pre-dawn twilight, armor clinking gently as he went.

The chillier outside air sharpened his senses as he breathed deep, scanning around the camp with his vivid blue eyes. He nodded a good morning at a young officer’s aide and proceeded toward the captain’s tent. Captain Will Fallowheart saluted him, though none too sharply, as Tristan approached. He was a thin man, lean but strong, with stormy gray eyes, pale skin when it wasn’t baked by the sun, and dark hair rapidly turning salt-and-pepper with gray the longer he was deployed in this active campaign. The lithe man made a notable contrast to Tristan’s own sturdy, muscular build and golden blond hair and beard. Fallowheart never could grow a beard, thought Tristan, smirking as he remembered the man’s previous attempt, which was comprised of a few patchy areas around the middle of his jawline, but it had refused to grow in anything like a recognizable fashion. All around them the light of dawn was beginning to wrap around the forms of tents, men, equipment and weaponry.

“Morning, Commander, sir.” He nodded. Tristan nodded in reply, giving silent permission for the captain to relieve himself of the little formality he was still showing. All officers knew how to be stern and proper and obsessed with etiquette while inspecting troops, visiting headquarters or the capitol, but out in the field, there was little enough comfort, so the slightly over-familiar attitude of one officer to another was often graciously overlooked from senior to junior officers in favor of greater comradery between them.

“What have you heard from the conscription officers?” Tristan asked the man, accepting a cup of strong, dark coffee from the other officer and sipping at it as he listened to Fallowheart’s reply.

“A fair number of new conscripts dredged up locally, it seems. Not enough to replace our losses from February, but apparently there’s one who looks like he might be a half-giant.” Tristan blinked.

“And the other half?” he asked mildly, thinking he would draw a joke form the incidental piece of news. The captain took him completely literally. Will had a dismal sense of humor, mostly staring in a puzzled fashion in the face of any kind of playful or joking speech.

“The other half is probably elfkind, based on the fact my Lieutenant said the boy has pointed ears.” Fallowheart replied, straight-faced. Tristan frowned in sudden curious interest, forgetting for the moment to tease his subordinate about his lack of humor.

“Well! That is worth a look, I think. Either somebody’s drunk very early today and there’s no leaf-eared lad, or there’s something very strange going on.” He said, turning to walk steadily toward the area of the camp where space and tents were set aside for newly conscripted recruits. Fallowheart followed behind him toward the squire’s encampment with a grumble of protest for his commander’s impulsive curiosity. Conscripts were always housed farthest from the officers, so it was a long walk. Until they were trained, seasoned knights did not share quarters with squires. It put them out of temper to be settled right alongside rookies every time a fresh batch of recruits arrived.

Before long they reached the muddy little field where the squires drilled formations and did basic weapons training. One of Fallowheart’s Lieutenants was marching back and forth in front of a row of two score young men in tattered clothing standing stiffly in parallel rows. Most of them were obviously drafted according to the king’s recent conscription decree, judging by their slumped, unhappy posture. One figure stood out at a distance as they approached, however, and it was not just his eager posture that belied him.

That little joke about being half-giant suddenly made sense to the knight commander as he drew closer to the lineup with every heavy, armored footfall. The eager boy was easily six and a half feet tall, maybe a bit closer to seven. His dark, ruffled hair shone with slightly blue highlights in the cold grayish morning sunlight and his long limbs terminated in overlarge hands and feet, giving the youth a gangly look. Overall, he looked as though he’d grown into his height very suddenly and hadn’t filled in the long vacant spaces created by his recently adopted proportions. Though his height tempted the eye to guess him an adult, the lack of any lines upon his face and hands coupled with the nervous, eager energy in every part of him belied him for a teenager, no more than seventeen or eighteen at most, thought Tristan. As they grew close enough to see such details, Tristan noted he _did_ , in fact, possess pointed, leaf-shaped ears.

“Not an elf, though…” The commander murmured.

“What?” Fallowthought inquired.

They stepped up to the line and the lieutenant saluted sharply and barked “Commander, Sir!” as he clicked his armored heels together. Tristan nodded to the officer, an unremarkable looking man of average height and build, with muddy brown hair and a moustache. He and the captain proceeded until they were standing just before the tall boy with his pointed ears sticking out on either side of his head. Tristan was not a short man, by anyone’s ruler, but even he had to tilt his head upward a bit to meet gazes with the odd young man. His own cobalt blue irises met the lad’s and he blinked with interest at the stormy gray-blue of their irises. As the point-eared boy’s eyes flicked back and forth between the commander and the captain, a metallic flash of reflected light shone in the gray-blue of those eyes.

Tristan felt a twinge of curious interest, but did not show it. He spoke briskly and suddenly, making those oddly reflective eyes blink in surprise as their owner realized he was being addressed.

“Dwarfkind are exempt from his majesty’s conscription decree… so what are you doing here, son?” He asked firmly. The young man stiffened, eyes flashing again, and stared back with determined excitement in his every fiber.

“I’m a volunteer, sir. I came to join the knighthood.” The bright, eager energy of the lad did not appear to touch the knight commander’s cold blue stare as he responded.

“Why? There are few enough young men of your kind left in this country. Go home and honor your tribe, son.” As expected, the face of the young man turned startled for a beat, but instead of defeat, defiance took hold of his expression a heartbeat later.

“Sorry, sir, but I am neither needed nor wanted in my tribe. I have come to make use of myself as a soldier. There is little point in exempting me, sir, even if my kin are excluded from the draft.” Tristan blinked at this statement and two very different emotions warred for dominance in his expression. The end result was probably a conflicted look, he thought with a little mental shrug. Sure, it seemed the boy was terribly misinformed about the nature of war and soldiery if he was begging to be enlisted, but on the other hand, there was hardly a more effective way to torpedo morale than to bring _that_ up, especially in front of a gaggle of new recruits. So, he let the pleasanter part of his reaction win out in the end and nodded slightly at the tall dwarf boy.

“True enough. So, if you’re so determined to stay, what do I call you?” He let a slight, steely smile touch the corners of his mouth, letting on just a little how the lad’s ironclad determination, albeit foolish, impressed him.

“Bado.” The dwarven boy replied, his deep voice hummed with satisfaction at the small show of acceptance by the commander. Tristan raised an eyebrow.

“Do you have a surname?” He asked. ‘Bado’ blinked at him with vacancy where comprehension should have been. Tristan put on a gracious smile. “What was your clan’s name?”

“It’s ‘Dramhau’” he replied. Tristan nodded. Then, he put a gauntleted hand out in front of him. The boy took it somewhat uncertainly and they shook on their meeting.

“Bado Dramhau, It’s good to meet you. I am Knight Commander Tristan Starson.” Bado nodded in reply.

“Thank you, Commander Starson, sir.” They released grips and both stood straight and tall as they regarded one another.

“Starting now you are _Squire_ Dramhau. Be sure to earn your keep. I want to find out I was right to accept you into my army.” He said gruffly, contradicting the sternness in his voice with the approving smile lines creasing at the corners of his eyes. The dwarven lad seemed to spark with energy and grinned fiercely with a fiery, determined expression.

“Yes sir!” He boomed, deep-timbered voice glowing with energy and passion. Tristan let the smile curl the corners of his mouth and nodded his approval.

“Good. I’ll be asking your commanding officers for reports on your performance. Show them what you’re made of and do as they order. The future will be bright for someone with your initiative, provided they back it up.” He cast a meaningful glance over the two rows of reluctant soldiers around the one eager one standing electrified with motivation before him. A good portion of the draftees perked up, getting more life showing in their eyes and a few even stood up straighter at his words. With a satisfied nod, the commander turned on his heel and marched away from the group, smiling confidently as he did so.

The fire in that dwarf’s belly would serve to inspire his comrades to higher achievement and morale. Even if he _was_ simply a naïve pup with pipe dreams of glory and fame as a decorated soldier, he could be a useful one along the way, at this rate.

 _And_ , most importantly for this particular moment, he would give him something cheerful to write to Lily about.

Tristan smiled all the way back to his officer tent, itching to scribble down the story of this unlikely meeting for his beloved wife.


	2. Fortune Favors Justice

“Sir?” Fallowheart asked quizzically, his tone inviting Tristan to repeat his question.

“I said, how is the dwarven squire faring?” the Knight Commander repeated, swishing a bit of hardtac in coffee to soften it. Supply lines were tenuous this close to the northern border of Norad and he didn’t think it right to dine on gourmet meals while his men subsisted on tasteless rations like this. Maybe it was just self-imposed misery, but he hoped seeing the gesture of solidarity would give his troops faith in his compassion for them. Meanwhile, the captain was smirking at him over his own cup of crumb-laden coffee.

“Taken a shine to him, haven’t you?” he teased. Tristan furrowed his brow at the captain.

“He’s a curiosity. Makes a good conversation piece, don’t you think?” He growled, brushing off the other man’s teasing.

“Well, he’s only getting more ‘curious’ as time goes on, it would seem.” Will replied, still smirking but not looking in his interlocutor’s eyes anymore. “Seems he’s also a blacksmith. When he realized we didn’t have any plate mail that would fit his overgrown hide, he went and made his own.” Tristan stared.

“Where did he find a forge to do it in?” He asked, surprise showing on his face.

“He made that, too. Cut a deal to get a tent to house it in by improving on the gear some of the veterans have been dragging around for years on end. He’s quite resourceful, it would seem.” He added offhandedly on the end.

“Well I’ll be damned! I knew the kid was fired up but I didn’t see that coming…” Tristan grinned, silently thanking the dwarf for giving him more good material for his letters to Lily.

“Don’t forget, Starson…” Fallowheart said in warning tones. “He’s untested. Training’s barely started. Don’t get your hopes up on that one. We might send him running back home to whatever dwarf village he scurried out of after all is said and done.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The Commander said dismissively, waving a hand, “But how are his comrades reacting to his antics?” He gave the Captain a sly look. Will furrowed his brow and gave Tristan a reluctant glance before admitting:

“His unit is faring better than any of the other groups of new recruits, or so Lieutenant Brusc tells me.” The captain growled into his coffee, reluctant to admit the truth of his interlocutor’s point.

“As I thought.” Tristan grinned. “One boy fiery enough will rub off on the others until they’re all rarin’ to outshine each other. He’s a good luck charm.”

“If you say so.” Will acquiesced, “But he sure hasn’t made any friends, according to Brusc.” Tristan shrugged.

“Well he _is_ the odd man out. I guess it’s not surprising. But hey, he doesn’t _have_ to make friends, just needs to be reliable and strong.” The captain shook his head at this assessment.

“Nah. It’s no good. The kind of hell war’ll put him through… no one can deal with that alone. Mark my words, Starson: If that kid don’t find anyone to relate to, he’s gonna crack one of these days.”

“Hm.” Tristan grunted. Inexplicably, a sudden twinge of anxiety prodded at his stomach, or at least he was _pretty_ sure he’d picked all the weevils out of his ration biscuit before eating it. He furrowed his brow. “Maybe I’ll go over and check on the recruits today.” He muttered absentmindedly. Will eyed him sidelong.

“Shouldn’t get so attached to squires, sir.” Fallowheart grumbled disapprovingly, lending credibility to his namesake, thought Tristan. Maybe that was uncharitable of him, but the Captain’s distaste disappointed Tristan. He was, himself, sparked to life by the dwarven squire’s moxy and he wanted very much to enjoy that spark. It had been a long time since he’d felt wakeful and interested beyond his duties in anything but his own family, miles away and only reachable by letter. He ignored the comment, tossed his head back as he downed the last of the sludgy ration coffee and stood up. Will followed him with his gray eyes as he turned to leave, but the commander asked no more of his subordinate.

“See you this afternoon after the parade drill.” He called over his shoulder without looking back.

Tristan frowned thoughtfully as he walked across the camp. The deep blue cape affixed to his armor, emblazoned as it was with the royal seal as well as his family coat of arms, completed the picture of his regal and heroic mystique. It wasn’t that the Knight Commander figured himself a hero; far from it. He knew better than most how short-lived heroes were in warfare, and how unlikely they were to be officers.  However, the sight of him looking like a mythic character put a sense of pride in the backbones of his soldiers and subordinates, so he bore with the ostentatious getup philosophically.

Fallowheart wasn’t wrong… New recruits were quite volatile in terms of their survival rates in real combat. Some folk just weren’t cut out for battle. Scratch that… very few people were cut out for battle at all, and _they_ were generally not the type one brings home to meet the family. Any man Tristan had ever met and liked was of the sort to have his heart slowly weathered away like a stone battered by ocean waves as long as he was involved in warfare. There really wasn’t any solid reason to believe that the dwarf kid would be any different. So maybe he just needed a little push…

Starson huffed to himself, shaking his head slightly as he continued at a brisk pace toward the new recruit training ground.

“You’re all the way in the rabbit hole now…” he muttered to himself. But for all his chastising, and the captain’s for that matter, there was a notable amount of spring in the Knight Commander’s step as he neared the far end of the camp.

The squire’s training ground lay just next to the temporary stable area, another fixture the officers and veterans disdained being settled near to, on account of the smell of manure and the wickering and whinnying of the horses. In addition, the squires were often tasked with various duties in the stables to do with the care and upkeep of the officers’ mounts. Traditionally, ‘knights’ were always mounted cavalry units, but the prolonged war and it’s many campaigns had reduced the numbers of suitable warhorses so drastically that the Royal Noradian Infantry Corpse was founded bearing the same identity as ‘Knights’ of the crown without so much as a steed among their fighting ranks.

Within the Royal Seventh Infantry Battalion it was much the same as with most factions of the King’s ground forces these days; only officers and elite soldiers received horses. The Cavalry charge was a rare thing in these days, mostly the mobility of horseback was spent on scouts when it wasn’t reserved for the highest ranking knights. For all that the times were thin, however, one interesting side effect of this exclusivity was providing a convenient lure to dangle in front of the squires to motivate their aspirations to greatness. A mount was a symbol of accomplishment, status, and honor. Even being charged with the care of a high ranking officer’s mount was a very great measure of approval for a squire from his C.O. And, the riders were spared the upkeep of the steeds so they could focus on their many other duties, so all in all it worked out very well.

The Knight Commander had just been silently congratulating himself on being the one who first employed the stables in the training, motivation, and morale management of new recruits when a sudden chaos of shouting, neighing, and incidental chaotic banging and clashing erupted from the stable yard. He frowned more deeply and turned southwest toward the sound.

Just outside the main stable, which was itself merely a long series of extra-large tent canopies with makeshift structures large enough to house their equine charges beneath them, a scene unfolded that made Tristan nearly spit with anger.

One of the precious few war horses in the king’s army reared dramatically with a sharp equine scream as it thrashed its forelimbs in the air in fear and rage. It was unsaddled and the lead attached to its bridle swung haphazardly to and fro as it tossed its great head without regard to the very solid hitch posts and fences nearby.  The probability of the steed maiming itself in panic on one of the neighboring structures seemed grim, but it was not the predicament of the huge speckled white and black horse that made the Commander’s blood boil.

Just before the animal a knot of four or five young men thrashed and screamed and swore at one another as they fought tooth and nail in the mud. The odd assortment of limbs jutting out of the kerfuffle gave some confusion as to who was intentionally fighting who, but just as Tristan drew in a breath and prepared to bellow a command, he faltered in surprise as one of the young men was thrown from the fight bodily by a powerful kick from a long leg belonging to an unseen someone buried at the bottom of the pile of struggling men. A sudden pang shot through him as Tristan thought he recognized a pained snarl in a deep voice from somewhere in the fight. He clenched his teeth and sucked in a breath, nostrils flaring in anger once more.

“ATTENTION!!” He roared, startling the five young men as well as the horse that was loose. The steed darted off to the East and jumped a fence before turning around in a wide arc and throwing its mane around in a show of flamboyant temper. Every man in the tangle but one stopped their struggle and stared in wide-eyed horror at the stormy expression of the officer now looming over them in his heroic armor. The long-limbed boy at the bottom of the dogpile of new recruits continued to struggle, seizing the opportunity and flinging one of the other young men off of him with a sudden twist of his body and a forceful blow from a big, squareish fist.

Evidently the lad now sprawled on his back from that last punch had been pinning the underdog face-down in the mud with a knee on his back, for as soon as his weight was off of him, the boy who threw the last punch lifted himself out of the squelching muck with a huge gasp followed by a long spell of frantic, wracking coughs. The other four had scrambled to their feet and gone rigid in a salute, doing their best to show well for the sudden apparition of their small army’s Commander. All of them looked as though they’d been dragged behind a runaway stagecoach along a mile of rocky terrain. One was even supporting another with an arm interlocked with his as he lifted weight off of a minor broken leg, by the look of it. 

Behind and beneath them all, the underdog continued to splutter and gasp great gulps of air in the wake of his apparent near-suffocation. Tristan glared between the small row of battered recruits and recognized a pair of pointed ears protruding from the mud-spattered countenance of the long limbed youth.

“Squire Dramhau!” He barked forcefully, “Stand up!” At his call the boy scrambled shakily to his feet and made a clumsy effort to wipe enough mud from his face and eyes to open them. When his blue-gray eyes found the stern and furious gaze of the knight commander they widened rapidly and the dwarf’s whole body went rigid in mortified shock.

“Sir!” He barked in reply, paying no heed to the bits of mud that flew from his sleeve and hand as he raised it to salute the Commander. He was covered from head to toe in wet earth, the stormy seas blue-gray of his eyes the only color on him not marred by the mud he’d been pinned down in moments before.

Tristan swept his glaring eyes over the five recruits, leaving them to squirm in the silence for a few moments before he spoke again.

“Well?!” He seethed. “Explain yourselves, squires!” No sooner had he spoken than three of the four recruits that had been on top in the brawl began speaking at once. The fourth was shaking his head as if he’d suffered a blow that knocked the sense out of him, and the last recruit, the dwarven boy, said nothing but glared at the others in silent disapproval, his mouth a thin line stretched with tension and disdain.

“He started the fight, sir!”

“The dwarf threw the first punch!”

“He hit Avery, sir! Sucker punched him! We jumped in to help.”

“That pointy-eared troll coulda killed me, sir! Should send _him_ back to the forest of beginnings. Damned beast, he is!”

Tristan sharply raised a hand to silence the boys. They clamped their mouths shut immediately. Tristan turned his burning gaze on the dwarven boy, who was staring furiously down at the mud just before his boots.

“Dramhau.” The Commander said sharply. Bado raised his eyes to the cobalt blue ones of his Commander.

“Yes sir?” He answered, forcing calm into his ragged voice. He was shaking visibly but there was no fear in his eyes. Shame, humiliation, and anger, sure… but no fear. Tristan slowed his own anger as he noticed this.

“Did you start this disgraceful display in the midst of my army?” he asked in a dangerous voice.

“Yes sir.” Bado said firmly. “I threw the first punch.” He glanced sidelong at the boy who must have been Avery with fury in his eyes, then looked back at Tristan, resolute. Tristan narrowed his eyes at the lad. He did not feel a sense of defiance or disrespect from those stormy blue-gray eyes, but nevertheless, something unmovable glinted in them behind the submissive disposition he was showing his superior in this moment. That was worth digging deeper…

“Dueling is a foolish, wasteful practice. I have no patience for men who put petty personal matters of ego over the good of their cause and their comrades.” He turned the burning cold of his cobalt blue gaze onto the four human recruits who had piled onto the dwarf in the fight. “But at least a duel is a fair fight! You four disgrace your unit with your cowardly display. I never wish to see four strong young soldiers piled like vultures on a single unarmed man again!” The four recruits cringed in the face of this condemnation. “And you,” He growled at the dwarven boy, “If you have the energy to start fights with other recruits, you must need more to occupy your time. You will be serving double duty until I say otherwise!” The other squires glanced at the lone boy with malicious satisfaction at his humiliation. Tristan bellowed one last command, dispersing them.

“Save your energy for the enemy! Now go report to your commanding officer and relay my displeasure to him regarding your behavior. If I find he has been given a higher estimation of your character than I would have described to him in light of this incident, I will see to it none of you ever receive promotion in this army! Now go!” All five nodded or saluted with alarm in their postures and turned to scamper off toward their own units. Bado Dramhau also turned to go, albeit in a wholly different direction.

“Not you. Stay.” Tristan barked. The dwarven boy froze and looked at the commander once more, waiting. Tristan narrowed his blue eyes at the lad, wheels turning in his mind.

“Sir?” the squire offered submissively.

“Why’d you hit him, soldier? I accepted you into my army on good faith. I told you not to make me regret it.” His voice was unshakably stern as he spoke, but the boy stood straight and tall, not cowering or rushing to justify himself as the others had done. He stared back into Tristan’s eyes for several heartbeats before answering, quietly and calmly.

“Avery was coming out of the stable leading Justice…” He said, naming the speckled horse now milling around just on the other side of the fence. He looked over at the mare and raised a hand to her. The boy clicked his tongue and whistled a short, bright note. Tristan’s eyes tracked over to the horse and widened as she pricked up her ears, trotted forward, accelerated to a run, jumped the fence, and came to a stop just before the pair of them, nuzzling her nose into the kid’s open palm. Bado resumed his explanation:

“He was speakin’ harshly to her and she started fussin’ a bit. I was in the next tent over when I heard the commotion and I came out in time to see him hittin’ her in the face over and over with the riding crop.” He gently turned the horse’s face with his big hands, showing Tristan the marks where the blows from the crop had drawn blood from her lips and eyelid on one side. The Knight Commander gritted his teeth in anger, but he stood silently as he waited for the boy to finish his explanation.

“I came over and hollered at him to knock it off, but he turned around and pointed at me with the thing, sayin’ I’d better take my fairy’s ears and go before he taught me a lesson in obedience, too. He turned back around and raised the crop to her again and I hit him. Next thing I know, we’re wrestlin’ around on the ground and three of his buddies jump me. Put my face down into the mud and piled on top of me. Thought for a sec I was really gonna die nothin’ but a squire, sir.” He looked steadily into Tristan’s eyes. “Thank you sir, for interrupting that. You probably saved my worthless hide in the nick of time!” He grinned suddenly, a half-embarrassed and half-pleased expression that looked wholly genuine to Tristan’s eye. Tristan blinked at him.

“A man who defends the weak is anything but useless, son.” He said solemnly, then returned the smile as he remembered how tattered and banged up the other recruits had been. He looked Bado up and down and noted he bore no more serious damage than the least battered of the four boys that had ganged up on him. “You held your own though, it would seem.” The kid nodded sheepishly.

“Well… I’ve got reach.” He qualified abashedly, shrugging with a half-smile.

“You’ve got _spirit_ , kid.” Tristan corrected, pointing a finger at him. “Bado, wasn’t it?” Bado nodded, looking tentatively pleased. Justice stepped closer and rested her head on the tall dwarf boy’s shoulder, sighing with a contented air. Tristan inclined his head toward the mare.

“Justice is Captain Fallowheart’s horse.” He explained, “He’s an old friend of mine. So, You’ve done me a favor today, son.” Bado brightened, staring with eager interest following this small offer of praise. Tristan scratched his bearded jawline and regarded the tall boy thoughtfully, eyeing the horse and the boy alternately.

“You’re good with monsters, aren’t you, kid? She’s always been a fiery sort of animal, but she’s tame as a kitten with you, it seems.” Bado shrugged in reply to this.

“I don’t think it’s hard to relate to them if you care to try. Avery ain’t the understanding type, I figure.” Tristan huffed a chuckle at this response.

“Well,” He sighed, “All that remains is to decide what’s to be done with you.” Bado’s expression deflated into a resigned expectation, but he didn’t cower, try to bargain, or offer one word of protest.

“I’ll accept whatever punishment you see fit, sir. I started that fight. I’ll take responsibility.” Behind the resignation in the statement, Bado’s eyes still bore the glint of pride and excitement Tristan’s praise and gratitude stirred up in the boy. The Knight Commander remained silent for a few seconds, narrowing his eyes at the squire and furrowing his brow as he thought carefully on the matter. Then he nodded.

“In addition to your regular chores and duties this week, you will clean out every stable, oil and polish every officer’s saddle, _and_ , He emphasized the word severely. Bado cringed, already calculating internally how many hours of work it would be. “…From this day forward, you will be responsible for the care and upkeep of Justice and Vashon, my own horse.” He smiled a fiercely satisfied smile as the realization and then pride and joy showed on the young man’s face. Being caretaker of the Knight Commander’s horse was a privilege of paramount status amongst squires. And, being charged with the care of two officers’ mounts was incredibly prestigious, a rare mark of high faith and trust from multiple high ranking knights. The dwarven squire nodded eagerly.

“Yes sir!” He boomed in his deep basso voice. Tristan nodded approvingly in reply, then changed his tone to a confidential and less volumous one.

“See to it that I find your performance in the stables this week impressive enough to justify that privilege, son.” He winked at the boy, who drew in a deep breath that puffed out his chest and grinned, nodding excitedly again.

“Yes sir! Absolutely!”

“Good.” Tristan said firmly, and turned to leave, grinning broadly once the young squire could no longer see his face.


	3. A Natural

Lieutenant Nathan Brusc _might_ have been intimidated or awed by the Knight Commander in his regal armor, but if he was he sure didn’t show it.

“Never known a Commander to take a personal interest in new recruits…” He mused, tugging one corner of his brown moustache thoughtfully as he regarded the knight commander.

“Appointment of officers is my prerogative as commander. I should think anyone in my position worth his salt would take note of talent in the ranks.” Tristan shot back coolly, implicitly docking a point or two from his personal regard for the lieutenant with his tone. Brusc blinked and frowned slightly, the significance of the comment not lost on him, apparently.

“Well, then. It is as you saw before, during the stables incident. The dwarf doesn’t get on with the other recruits.” The distant, icy expression on the man’s face was suddenly kindled into something more interested, and more devilish. “But,” He continued, “The kid’s got talent. He could take any two of the others with one hand behind his back, and it’s not just his size, either. He knows weapons. He knows armor. He knows how to watch and wait and strike where the least effort will do the most good.” Brusc shrugged with a lopsided, roguish smile, “He’s a natural, in other words.” Tristan grinned a wolfish grin in response to this report, delighted that his instincts had proved correct and his interest well-founded. Brusc continued, in conspiratorially excited tones with the Commander.

“And you know, Commander, all the rest of those greenhorns in his unit are above average in their progress compared to the other units. They hate ‘im’ alright, ever since you favored him with your horse duty, but it makes ‘em fiery. They want to knock him down a peg or two, but they can’t keep up. It’s the damnedest thing, but I’d be lying if I said I’d ever seen a group of newbies growing like these ones are.” The lieutenant grinned back at the Commander.

Tristan chuckled with a satisfied air.

“Everything set for tomorrow, then?” He asked. Brusc nodded.

“Oh, yes. And maybe being showed up by a whole unit full of superior squires will fire up all the rest of em’ if we’re lucky.” The wolfish grin returned to the Lieutenant’s face.

“Indeed.” Tristan replied as he rose from the camp chair he’d been sitting in across from Brusc. Dusk was falling and the light of the fire crackling beside them would soon be the brightest illumination within sight.

“Commander.” Brusc called as Tristan turned to leave. He tilted his head and looked back over his shoulder at the other man, waiting. “It’s good to see a higher-up nosin’ around the greenhorn’s yard.” He grinned. “You’re as much to blame for all the fired-up squires as the dwarf kid is, ya know. Been watchin’ how my charges watch you come and go, see? It gives ‘em a thrill to know their Commander is keepin’ an eye on them.”

“Good to hear.” Tristan replied gruffly, but with a smile still pulling on his mouth. Brusc caught his approval and nodded a last approving nod as the Commander left him sitting alone by the fireside a moment later.

Crickets were singing all around and the dim little glows of fireflies began to wink into existence as night fell around the Knight Commander striding through the camp. He turned left just outside the squires’ training yard and headed for the stables. A tall someone was lighting the lanterns in the huge, linked-up stable tents as he approached. Tristan walked right up to the man and the pointed ears on either side of his head twitched just before he turned and greeted him.

Bado did not salute Tristan this time, but he did take off one of his leather work gloves and put out a hand to shake the knight’s hand with a somewhat familiar confidence.

“Evenin’ sir.” The dwarf’s deep voice hummed. Tristan nodded.

“How does my protégé fare this evening?” He asked. Bado looked about him at the perfectly kept and clean stable. The bright eyes of half a dozen healthy horses were turned to him. He really had a way with beasts…

“Very well, sir.” The youth answered. “Better than Avery, anyway.” A devilish grin opened up across the dwarf’s face. The Commander bent his expression into the thin veneer of a frown of disapproval.

“A knight doesn’t revel in his opponent’s loss, boy.” He said seriously, then smirked through the mask of sternness, “Even over a pompous brat like him.” Bado smirked back, enjoying as always the inside humor with his mentor.

“Sorry, sir. I’ll endeavor to be more humble.” He inclined his head in a deliberately polite gesture. Tristan chuckled.

“See that you do, soldier. I can only justify this blatant favoritism as long as you are objectively the most deserving, you know.” He winked at his favored fledgling knight, who beamed back at him behind the mild character of most his expressions.

“Yes sir. Understood, sir.” He kept up the pretense of formality and rank. Tristan laughed it off quietly. Then he regarded the lad more closely. It had been a few weeks since he’d last left a message folded in one of the seams of his saddle for the dwarf who looked after his mount, requesting an evening rendezvous to speak candidly with his favored squire.

The young man had begun to fill in with muscle between the awkward extremities of his gangly, long-limbed frame. He hadn’t accumulated enough bulk to make him statuesque or anything, but only a few months in he was already quite transformed from the stringy, lean creature he’d been that first day Tristan had picked him out of the lineup of recent conscripts. The wild, always disorderly quality of his dark hair and sideburns even seemed more masculine and less boyish now, or perhaps that was merely owing to the slow progression of his sideburns down his jawline, apparently with aspirations to forming a full beard at some point in future.

Captain Fallowheart was right, of course. No one got through warfare unscathed, physically, mentally, or emotionally. The kid would need a friend if he was going to survive it, and he sure wasn’t making any by outshining every other squire in the army. So, Tristan had appointed himself the young man’s friend. Sure, it was a pretty uneven friendship what with the division of rank between them, but hell; he respected the dwarf and was given respect in return in ample quantities. Who was he trying to kid, anyhow? He liked he boy. And after all, wasn’t an affinity a pretty standard rock on which to build a friendship, anyway?

Tristan rummaged a hand in a leather pouch on his belt and pulled out a small flask. He showed it to the lad with an approving and mischievous glance.

“Cause for celebration tomorrow.” He said cheerfully. “So, let’s have a toast.” He unscrewed the small steel shot glass that was affixed over top the lid of the flask and poured a shot of whisky, handing it to the dwarf and then tapping the rim of it with the side of the flask with a tiny ‘tink’ sound.

“Congrats, kid. Starting tomorrow you’re _knight_ Dramhau; First Dwarven knight in the recorded history of the Noradian Royal Infantry Brigade.” Bado beamed at him and tentatively brought the tiny vessel to his lips with his huge hand. He hesitated only a moment, tossing back the alcohol as he watched Tristan throw back a big swig, himself, from the flask. Then, almost immediately he coughed and wheezed at the unexpected burn of the whisky. Tristan barked out a laugh at the sky.

“You need practice, dwarf! Don’t they make liquor in your clan?” He chided, elbowing the younger man companionably and pouring him a second shot.

“N-nothing di-“ he coughed again, “Distilled…” The Commander gave a little acknowledging grunt and took another swig from the flask. Bado sipped more carefully at the fiery liquor now that he’d become acquainted with its character.

“Training’s done now.” Tristan said after a few moments’ silence, suddenly a little more solemn. “You’ve not disappointed me so far, kid. I hope you keep all that momentum going as you start your career.” He looked over at the lad and gave him a hard, slightly haunted stare. Bado swallowed and returned the serious gaze apprehensively.

“The only way out is up, son.” The commander said ominously, “Excepting of course being buried…” He glanced away with a bitter note in his voice, then looked back at the blue-gray eyes of his protégé. “Climb the ranks. I’ll help you as much as I can. Don’t want to see you get killed, after all.”

“Thank you, Tristan.” Bado said sincerely, using the knight’s first name with respect and gravity. The familiarity of the gesture was of an admiring sort, not in the least intended to bring the Commander down to the level of a squire, but rather to acknowledge the humanity of the man, instead of than treating him as a cold and distant authority figure. The Knight Commander appreciated it probably more deeply than the kid could possibly know.

“You’re welcome, Bado.” He responded in kind, then held out his hand for the Dwarven squire to return the tiny metal cup to him. He screwed it back onto the flask and pocketed the thing, feeling the semi-metallic blue-gray eyes of the young man on him all the while. Finally, he looked up at him again, meeting that level, honest gaze with his own weary one and nodding his goodnight as he spoke.

“See you tomorrow, kid. Get a good night’s rest and look sharp. I want to look proud tomorrow so you have to first.” He gave a half-smile and shook the young man’s hand firmly again before departing into the fully-gathered night as he made his way back to his tent. 


	4. You'll Be My Sword

“FORM UP!! TO MEEE!” Tristan bellowed at the very top of his booming voice. “CLOSE RANKS!” He pulled Vashon’s reigns and wheeled the horse around ending on a mighty, iconic rearing pose as he called to the scattered troops. They immediately responded, closing in tight around him in a shaky formation and brandishing their swords and spears outward in a bristling ring. He turned his head this way and that, golden hair tossed around like a halo as he searched the battlefield, taking in the layout and events, planning the next move and contingencies beyond that, …and looking for a tall soldier in curious hand-made dwarven armor.  No such figure appeared in his field of vision. No familiar basso voice sounded a battle cry within his range of hearing.

The Knight Commander gritted his teeth as he tried not to search the prone, dead, and dying figures on the battlefield for his friend and protégé. He didn’t have time to worry over one soldier when all the army was his responsibility, not even if that soldier was a friend, and not even if that friend was a solitary youth he’d taken under his wing…

Tristan wheeled around again, directed the small ragged force of mostly recently confirmed knights to face a disorderly charge of empire soldiers coming up the hill, and led his own force’s charge, roaring his challenge and channeling the anxiety and fury and fear in his heart to fuel the destruction he wrought on his enemies. The sooner the battle closed, the sooner he could direct his energies toward finding the missing dwarven knight.

Adrenaline makes a horribly visible, audible, and physically exhausting eternity out of any battle. The sense of his own mind speeding up and sharpening focus onto the face of the startled, confused, then agonized young enemy soldier as Tristan plunged his greatsword right through the man’s chest and into a second soldier behind the lad etched the image on the backs of his eyelids. That sight, he knew very well, would be returning in his nightmares soon enough.

The cacophony of steel on steel, bones breaking and the mingling roars and cries of men and beasts whirling all around him would have disoriented the Knight Commander in bygone years. Now, though… now he was a seasoned soldier and he did not pause in his battle-heat for any of these details. When a large young solder of the enemy’s forces closed on him and lifted his sword to bring it down on Tristan’s head, he parried the strike, drew a dagger from his belt, cut the soldier’s throat, and spun around, carrying the momentum into a lateral swing that beheaded another empire soldier before he finished the motion.

Fallowheart’s brigade would be there with what cavalry the king’s army could muster any minute now. The tide of this battle would soon turn in their favor. They had but to hold out and band together, minimizing casualties until their reinforcements could arrive.

The action that day had begun appearing favorable to the Noradian King’s forces. By all accounts, the first impression was that the Noradians had stumbled on a small detachment of empire soldiers and surprised them. The enemy soldiers floundered, showing uncertainty and drawing out the excitable young greenhorn knights into close combat for what promised to be easy and glorious victory before revealing the bulk of their forces as hundreds of empire soldiers poured out copses of trees to either side of the battlefield the Noradians now found themselves on. The small group had been a lure, and they had bumbled right into the trap, dissolving into panicked chaos as more enemy soldiers flanked the group of Noradians furthest forward, boxing them into a bristling cage of spears.

Brusc had driven his recruits, just freshly promoted to knighthood and tasting their first combat action, into the side of the enemy force boxing in the less disciplined greenhorns who had jumped the gun. Bado had been part of Brusc’s forces. Tristan remembered glimpsing the tall young dwarven knight slamming into the enemy soldiers, greatsword held poised to run through whoever stood in his path. The empire soldiers melted before him as he swung and lashed at them from his greater height, looking for all the world like a mythic being of terrible might and force; a creature of legend joined in a battle with mortals for reasons unknown. Then he was gone, swallowed up by the chaos of bodies and steel and blood as the formations dissolved and the battle became one enormous writhing mass of murderous, terrified men spilling each other’s blood indiscriminately as they tried their best to survive the fight by winning it for their own respective leaders.

Only the changing light spelled the true passage of time as the great watchful eye of the sun tracked slowly over them. When the first colorful distortions of sunset just began to appear above the horizon, Tristan heard the trumpet call of the cavalry and he drove Vashon to rear up high again, holding his sword aloft and shouting triumphantly for all he was worth.

Fallowheart’s cavalry reinforcements were fresh and full of rage, ready to avenge the losses since that morning and more than enough to reduce the enemy lines into scattered, fleeing deserters. They washed over the battlefield like a cleansing tide bearing heaven’s wrath, reducing what was left of the enemy to a carpet of corpses littering the green knolls and hillocks of the lush, pastoral plains. The gruesome sense of pride the Knight Commander felt as he watched the mounted knights obliterate all that was left of the forces that had not fled already was not tempered by any shade of humanity. That’s what war did to you, after all. Sooner or later death was so commonplace, so taken-for-granted that one could look upon a hoard of soldiers who had very recently been breathing and shouting and fighting and feel nothing but morbid satisfaction as he observed their still, ragged, mutilated bodies, simply content in the knowledge that dead enemy soldiers could not kill him or his friends and fellow knights any longer.

He was not mad yet though. The guilt and pain and monstrosity of these sentiments would return to him, once the inhuman battle rage had subsided. He'he closed his eyes to sleep, exhausted but now haunted by the horrified faces and the wide eyes of all the people he had slain, up close enough to hear the tone of their startled shouting grow muddied with the blood that poured into their lungs and throats just after they were impaled or dismembered by his cold steel blade.

Before long the quiet following the storm settled over the plains and the moans and cries of wounded and dying men rose into his consciousness as soon as the noise of battle no longer obscured them. Tristan sheathed his blade and looked around, panting as weariness began to weigh down on him, the adrenaline finally subsiding. He passed through the tattered lines of soldiery throwing up weary victory shouts, searching for a pair of pointed ears.

Tristan rode the entire length of the field and had just begun to despair for his young friend’s life when a familiar voice shouted his name. He whipped his head around to recognize the mustached face of lieutenant Brusc, cupping one hand around his call to carry his voice even as the other was bound in a sling, close to his chest. Tristan turned Vashon toward Brusc and rode to him with an expectant look. Brusc knew what the Commander sought without being told.

“Last we saw he was still fighting, Starson. Just him surrounded by a pack of them when the cavalry arrived. He’d seen a little bunch of our own about to get swallowed up and he charged out there on his own against orders to try and help them.” Brusc held up his good hand and pointed due West. “Over there, pass the second hill. It slopes down a little.” The lieutenant didn’t sound hopeful but his voice wasn’t touched by resignation either. Tristan held his breath as he spun his horse around and charged through the battlefield in the direction the other man had pointed.

The thunder of Vashon’s hooves overlapped with the panting of Tristan’s breath and the pounding of his heart, blood rushing in time with the beat in his ears. None of it could drown out the fear, though. His thoughts raced frantically, flipping through any number of grisly outcomes for his protégé once he had charged off alone to aid his comrades at the end of the battle. He tried desperately not to picture his young friend’s face with glassy eyes wide, still, and shocked with the sudden reality of his mortality. Tristan fiercely pushed the thoughts away as he scanned the wreckage of the two armies for signs of life, movement, or a familiar tall silhouette. No hint of the young dwarven knight emerged.

Turning right and left in the saddle, Tristan snarled a frustrated curse and urged his mount up the next hillock. Vashon weaved between the wreckage, abandoned weapons, armor, and corpses deftly, keeping a swift pace, though it could not be swift enough for her rider. Just as they reached the crest of the hill, the knight commander’s eyes widened as they fell on a scene just as horrible as it was a relief to his heart.

A single figure knelt upright amid a desolate little valley full of blood, death, and iron. Bearing most of his weight upon one knee and his greatsword re-employed as a crutch, his other leg was a mess of blood, tattered leather, and mail rings. He had torn away part of the armor himself, it seemed, to wrap a makeshift tourniquet around his thigh. A world’s worth of exhaustion dragged the young man down, every part of him bent with strain and just barely able to hold himself off the ground. His head was hung low, facing the ground with eyes closed as his chest rose and fell with ragged, panting breaths. Even shrunken to this battered, fatigued state, the pointed ears jutting out from the dark mess of hair, blood, sweat, and mud gave away the dwarf’s identity at a distance.

Tristan’s heart leapt and he called out in his booming voice, trained to roar over the chaos and din of battle. A wide, wild smile stretched across his face.

“DRAMHAAAUU!!” He bellowed. The ragged figure flinched visibly at the sound and Tristan saw Bado lift his head shakily in response to the call. The Knight Commander charged forward on Vashon, closing the distance between them in a few breaths and dismounted ten paces from the young man, jogging the last few yards of the approach. “Damn, but you had me worried, kid! I thought you’d—I thought—“ He trailed off, panting, and the smile slipped off his face as Tristan’s eyes locked with his young friend’s.

The stormy blue-gray of the dwarf’s slightly metallic irises flashed at the knight commander, the whites of his eyes visible all the way around them. His face described utter agony and torment, a terrible blend of physical pain and emotional devastation. His teeth were clenched and his face was a mask of blood and dirt and sweat. His breathing quickened to panicked gasps hissing through his teeth as he looked up at Tristan… and shattered.

It happened both instantly and over several long moments, somehow. Tristan’s own eyes widened and his throat went dry as Bado began to shudder and tremble before him. His pupils contracted, dilated, and contracted again, and a trickle of blood ran down from the corner of his mouth as he bit down hard enough to bleed his own gums. He shivered violently and gave a strangled sound like a gasp and a sob together just as he clapped one of his large squareish hands over his eyes, smearing more blood onto his face as he did so. Words deserted Tristan, he stared in horror as several spasms of pain and grief went through the boy in front of him, no more than seventeen or eighteen years old and drenched in the blood of his enemies and himself.

It had been so easy to forget…

Dressed in armor and wielding a sword of his own make, the boy before him had masqueraded as a man very well indeed. He was more than a match for even many seasoned knights in combat, thanks to his talent and size, and that combined with his deep voice made it terribly reflexive to think of him as a fellow adult. The person in front of him with his face buried in his hands was barely more than a child… and he’d been thrust into _this._ Tristan looked around sadly at the fallen soldiers surrounding them. In the distance the moans and cries of the maimed and dying could be heard, but here all was silent. They were all dead already. What kind of monstrous world would lay so many bodies at the feet of a boy like him? The Knight Commander sighed sadly, looking down at the young man he’d taken under his wing.

“I’m s-sor-ry!” Bado choked, his voice a mess of rasping and tightened muscles making the tone of it higher and more faint. “Th-they’re all—“ he gasped, “all d-dead! I c-couldn’t… couldn’t s-save…”

“Hey, hey… Easy now…” Tristan said gently, Kneeling down with a rustle of mail and gripping the dwarf’s shoulders.

“N’th’rest’f’them” Bado ground out from behind his teeth in guttural tones wrenched with horror, “I _killed_ them _._ I killed _all_ of th-them…” He lifted his bleak gaze to the corpses of soldiers all around and stared at them in wide-eyed devastation. Then, he looked up into Tristan’s eyes again and a terrified, manic laugh escaped him, like nothing he’d heard from the boy before. It sent an eerie shiver up the Knight Commander’s spine and he felt his mouth tighten into a line as he stared in shock at his young friend. “It wa—“ Bado gasped, “It w-was _easy_ , Tristan… it wa-as s-so _easy_ …” He gestured around him with his bloody, gauntleted hand, his expression lost, frantic, and bewildered.

“Now just a mi—“ Tristan began, but the blood-soaked glove of his friend seized the collar of his under-dressings protruding from the neck of his breastplate and shook him once as Bado screamed:

“This!! What the fuck _is_ this, Tristan?! WHAT AM I?!” Tristan stared levelly back into those tormented, agonized eyes, unmoving for a long count of three.

“This… is war, son.” He said quietly, but with ironclad certainty in his voice, “And you… are a knight; a soldier; a weapon.” The steel in Bado’s grip loosened and the hand clutching Tristan’s collar sagged downward without releasing the fabric. His face took on a haunted look of slow surrender, almost becoming longer and older before the Knight Commander’s eyes. Tristan’s heart ached for the boy. He didn’t deserve this. He drew a breath and spoke again.

“You’re going to be a war hero, the way you went through the enemy… You were built for this…” Those blue-gray eyes stared in defeated misery at him, but he smiled a rueful, sympathetic smile at the young man. He gripped the dwarf’s shoulder firmly and squeezed. “But you weren’t _made_ for this.” He added. A flicker of hope and confusion passed through those metallic eyes.

“Wha…” The boy murmured. Tristan continued to smile at him, hoping he could be the bridge back to life and reason for his friend.

“From now on, you’ll be at my side. You’ll do as _I_ order. You’ll be my sword, Dramhau… and a sword does not bear guilt for its wielder’s actions.” Bado blinked at him and his breathing slowed. His shivering quieted down and Tristan felt him relax a little into the exhaustion of the battle and the release from his newly found emotional burdens. “You’re an outstanding Knight, son. And beneath it all you must continue to be yourself. When all of this is over… you’ve got to still be here, okay? You can shed your armor when the fighting’s over. Don’t you dare shed your heart or your soul.”

Bado stared at him for another long pause, searching Tristan’s cobalt blue eyes deeply. Then he swallowed, blinked twice as if his eyes were burning, and said, almost inaudibly:

“Yes, sir.”

Tristan grinned another wide grin at the boy and clapped his shoulder affectionately.

“Good man.” He said gruffly, then stood up and offered his hand to help the dwarf to his feet. As Bado stood up with his help Tristan looked grimly at the injury to his leg.

“It’s not serious, I think, but it did bleed a lot…” Bado said quietly, the half-delirious character of impending unconsciousness sounding in his voice. Tristan grunted disapprovingly as the younger knight tried to put weight on the leg and braced his side against the dwarf’s, binding an arm around his chest to help bear the weight. With the other arm, Tristan gestured to Vashon some yards away and whistled. She came trotting over in perfect, attentive obedience and stopped just before them. Bado looked sidelong at his commanding officer uncertainly but Tristan shoved him up into the saddle with an exasperated huff.

“I need you in top shape as soon as possible, Knight. You’re not to overdo it or risk prolonging your convalescence in any way, so get on the horse and don’t complain!” He growled. Bado looked down at him from the horse’s back and smiled faintly through his fatigue, understanding perfectly. Then he let his eyes close and focused on keeping himself upright on the horse as Tristan led her back to the camps to get stitched up… physically, at least.

Tristan looked up at the figure out of the corner of his eye, cringed slightly, and then sighed quietly under his breath.

“I’m sorry…”

Bado didn’t hear the words, barely an exhalation on the Knight Commander’s lips, but somehow Tristan felt certain he knew them anyway.


	5. Long Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter actually overlaps with the story [Brothers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3785632/chapters/8422513) and brushes up against the background of Bado's relationship to Gaius, which you can read more about in that fic.

Clang…clang…clang.

A steady, metallic rhythm tugged on Tristan’s ears and bent his mouth into a frown in the middle of the relatively quiet knights’ camp. That damn dwarf was at his forge again! He ground his teeth and corrected his course, turning toward the strangely oblong burgundy tent with a chimney built into it and quickening his pace.

What was that idiot thinking? Sure, forging didn’t do much with his injured leg but stand on it, but still! If he didn’t manage to tear out his stitches he still wasn’t helping it heal any faster. Tristan picked out a few choice words for his favored but disobedient subordinate as his boots tramped the half-dried mud of the camp with a slightly vicious energy.

He reached the tent in only a couple minutes and ducked inside, flipping the tent flap aside with a furious gesture.

“Dramhau!” He barked angrily as he entered. The clanging abruptly ceased as the tall figure of Norad’s only dwarven knight twisted around and Bado’s gray-blue eyes found Tristan’s cobalt blue ones blazing with disapproval.

“Commander.” The point-eared knight said calmly, inclining his head politely. There was no defiance or pepper in the young man’s attitude but even the steady, quiet manner devoid of obvious repentance nettled the Knight Commander.

“You are violating my orders again.” Tristan growled. Bado stared quietly at him, blinking every couple seconds. By now the young man knew that his commander acted out of concern for his wellbeing. He was not threatened by the bristling of the imposing blond knight before him, but neither did he show any sign of acquiescence. “I told you to lay low!” Tristan barked, pointing an accusing finger at his young friend.

Bado continued to meet his gaze, but his brow lined with an echo of the anguish Tristan had seen in the knight after his first real battle, not seven days prior. The commander’s anger faltered.

“I’m sorry, Tristan…” Bado said quietly, genuine apology in his voice. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t stop seeing them… thinking about them… except when I’m forging. This is the only way I know how to stop it.”

Tristan blinked and felt his own brow furrow with concern. His lips parted as if to speak but the words died on his tongue. He knew exactly what the younger knight was feeling. Had he not spent years trying to forget the faces of dead men whose blood stained his hands no matter how long it had been since they’d died on his sword? No words, even from one who understood like himself, would undo that kind of thing. But, at the very least he could give the kid a distant hope for peace of mind.

“It may never stop…” He said in a voice as quiet as Bado’s own, “But over time it’ll fade. And when you put down your sword for good you can change. Right now you are a soldier and you are my sword. I am going to use you to strike at my enemies, to keep my country and my family safely out of the hands of that filthy empire. Right now this s what you are… what you _chose_ to be… but someday I’ll lay down my weapons, including you. When that time comes, you’ll be free to do no more harm to anyone. If you follow me now I can shield you from the worst until then.” He stared steadily into the stormy ocean eyes of his friend as he spoke, hoping against hope that he could provide some measure of comfort and reassurance with his words.

“The worst?” Bado inquired after a long pause.

“Death… isolation… _truly_ horrible deeds on your conscience. If you stay at my right hand, I’ll decide where you go and what you do. You would not, for example, be ordered to execute prisoners, or torture spies to get information out of them.” He said reasonably. Bado flinched visibly and his eyes got a bit wider as he stared at his commanding officer. His throat moved as he swallowed.

“I would—“ He croaked, “Certainly prefer that… if you’ll have me. I don’t know how much use I’ll be to you, sir.” Tristan smiled and shook his head a little, chuckling. The young man looked up to him so completely he hadn’t even considered the other part of his motivation.

“Just be what you are and I’ll be more than happy to keep you at my side, son. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone if a high ranking officer like myself chooses a fighter like you for his second.” Bado swallowed again, not particularly reassured by the look of him.

“What if I can’t fight again?” he asked in a small, faltering voice.

“You’ll have to one way or another.” Tristan shrugged, telling the ugly truth, “You can do it. It won’t get much easier, but let me tell you a secret.” He grinned. Bado blinked again and raised his eyerbows, waiting for him to continue. Tristan pointed at him again, reaching out and tapping on his sternum as he spoke. “If you’re scary enough, you won’t _have_ to fight as often.” He said slyly. Bado tilted his head.

“How’d’ya figure that?” he asked.

“If the enemy is too busy running in fear, you’ll not have to run him through. The more terrible you _appear_ to be, the less you have to actually be to get by. We don’t need the enemy dead if they’re retreating, yielding territory, and surrendering. That’s one of the only bloodless ways to end a battle, you know. Scare the fight out of them.”   A look of dawning comprehension came over the dwarf’s face and Tristan thought he saw hope kindled in the other man’s eyes. Yes, he’d become a killer and yes he’d have to kill again and again throughout his career, but at least there was some way he could minimize the necessity by his own power. That more than anything seemed to reassure the young man.

“Well then,” He said, the spirited tone he’d had before his first battle returning to his basso voice, “I’ll have to set about making some fiercer looking armor, won’t I?” Tristan grinned a wolfish smile and nodded.

“And a sword to match! Maybe with some jagged teeth along the blade or something.” He chuckled a fiendish little laugh, his elation at seeing his friend’s spirits rise overlapping with the inverted strategy for sparing him as much bloodshed as possible. They shared a mutual gaze full of determination and relief before Bado raised his hammer in a mild gesture and dipped his head slightly.

“Thank you, Tristan.” He said sincerely.

“You’re welcome… Bado.” The Knight Commander returned, risking that some eavesdropping punk might overhear his favor of the dwarven knight through the canvas wall of the tent to reveal his affection for his young friend more directly than usual. The kid could use it now, after all. He offered his right hand and Bado took it in his own larger, squareish one and shook it firmly with warmth in his expression. Tristan pointed fiercely at him with his other hand suddenly and growled, “But you better not overdo it with this forging stuff or I’ll confiscate your damned hammer, you stubborn fool!”

Bado actually laughed aloud and the sound was like sunlight cracking thick winter ice, bright and warm and powerful all at once. Tristan smiled broadly. There was hope for this kid, after all. No one who could laugh like that could be a lost cause, after all.

They exchanged a few more pleasant words and then Tristan bid the younger man farewell, admonished him once more not to overwork himself, and turned to leave, ducking through the tent flap as he went.

Just as he blinked the brighter light from his eyes and his expression resumed a thoughtful frown he started and stared down at a short figure looking up at him with a reflective blue-gray gaze like a storm on the ocean, exactly the same as the eyes of the man he’d just been talking to excepting that _this_ young man had only one good eye, the other closed with a long blue scar running over it and down his cheek. The pointed ears on either side of the dwarf’s dark, mussed hair perked up as he saw the recognition flash across Tristan’s face. The short dwarf who could have been Bado’s brother by the family resemblance just waited, staring eagerly at Tristan’s vivid blue eyes with tentative hope in his face. Tristan drew a long breath and opened his mouth.

“I know who you have come to see.” He said slow and calm, then offered his gauntleted hand to the stranger, saying: “I am Knight Commander Tristan Starson.” The young man gripped his hand and squeezed it firmly.

“Gaius Dramhau.” He said with a nod. There it was, the name which confirmed what his eyes at already told him. This ‘Gaius’ person had come searching for the wayward kinsman of his that had run off to join the knighthood. Perhaps he meant to persuade the young man out of his choice, but it was too late for that. His stomach twisted and he tried very determinedly not to recognize a jealously protective streak as he recalled his young friend asserting that he wasn’t wanted or needed back home with his tribe. But… if that were true, what was this bright-eyed brother figure doing way out here looking for him? He forced the thoughts away and turned in place, indicating the tent flap.

“Pleased to meet you. Folow me.” He said in carefully neutral tones, leading the young man into the tent after him. Once again the dimmer light of the tent’s interior caused him to blink. Bado was back at the forge, but he clearly felt Tristan re-enter the space.

“Thought you had work to do…” He said mildly, without turning away from his work.

“I do, but it can wait a moment. There’s someone here to see you.” He ushered Gaius forward and stood aside. Bado turned around and stopped stone-still when he saw the smaller dwarf with his own coloration. Tristan glanced between the two dwarves, carefully noting the shocked, hurt, hopeful, and joyous part of both their wide-eyed expressions as they beheld each other.

“Y-you’re…” Gaius whispered, “You’re _alive_!” Tears rolled out of his good eye, creating an odd symmetry with the shining tear track opposite the long vertical scar on the other side of his face.

“Gaius! Your eye—“ Bado gasped in almost the same instant.

All at once it made sense. Tristan felt his expression change from deliberate neutrality to a small sad smile and he gave a little ‘hm’ and walked out of the tent to give them a moment to talk privately. Once outside, he planted his boots, folded his arms, and looked up at the cloudy gray sky with bright rays of sun breaking through here and there. There he stood, blocking the entrance to the tent and glowering at one or two soldiers that appeared to want to enter to ask a favor of the blacksmith. From inside he heard the sad but necessary exchange that mended the bond between the two dwarves since Bado had left home in spite of Gaius’ wishes. He heard the older anticipate the younger begging him to desert the army and return home and he heard the younger refuse to do so, insisting he would not try to change Bado’s choice, regardless of how ill this path suited the gentle nature of the taller dwarf. And, he heard Gaius give up on taking the dwarven knight home with him and insist that Bado write to him henceforth.

Tristan’s mouth tightened into a line and his eyes stung a little as he glared down at his feet, bitterly cursing the circumstances in his heart. He didn’t know what had driven Bado from his clan and he couldn’t say the kid wasn’t better off here, now… but the mere thought that the part-time nightmare he had sold himself to was the better of the choices he had seen for himself raked at the heart of the older knight bitterly through all the years of his gradual numbing to all the small tragedies of war and soldiers.

When finally Gaius came back out of the tent, he nodded at the smaller dwarf and bid him goodbye before returning to his tent, sitting down heavily in his camp chair and sighing a huge, weary sigh. He stared down at his hands hanging limply over his knees for a long moment or two and then gathered himself up, reasserting his determination to help the young man whose gentle heart had ended up lost in the tumultuous sea of warfare and conflict. His thoughts turned to the more distant future and he plucked up his quill and ink, unrolled a sheaf of parchment and began scratching out a letter to Lily.


	6. Friend or Fealty

“Are you sure you want me there?” Bado asked in plaintive tones that sounded to Tristan an awful lot like ‘Do I have to go?’. The Knight Commander glowered at his young friend in only half-hearted disapproval. The truth was he didn’t much want to be there either, so it was a touch difficult to invest himself fully in insisting on the matter.

“If I have to be there, so do you.” He said finally, compromising once he determined he could not hide his own lack of enthusiasm from the perceptiveness of his friend. Bado knew him better than that, by now. “You’re my right hand, after all. You wouldn’t want me to appear without my coat of arms or my sword, would you? You are much the same: part of my appearance as Knight Commander. You’re a symbol of my influence and might, now.” Despite the lofty arrogance of the words themselves, Tristan’s mocking tone revealed his own distaste for such pomp and it drew a chuckle from the Dwarven man’s throat.

“I suppose we can’t have you losing face, eh, old man?” The younger knight teased. Tristan frowned and thumped his friend on one of his broad shoulders for the jibe. Bado didn’t show any sign that he’d registered the hit. Even if he’d thrown a blow intended to hurt the overlarge dwarf, the Knight Commander was fairly sure he could not have made the huge man budge more than an inch. Tristan grinned in spite of himself, happy regardless of anything else to see the other man’s spirits rising enough to make jokes at his expense.

Ever since the first, several months ago, every battle he participated in was immediately followed by a thick slump of depression that lasted no less than a week, unless of course another battle called him to his duty sooner than that. He’d rouse himself if Tristan ordered it no matter what else was happening, but the young man was silent, sullen, and completely inconsolable following every major combat action he was asked to fight in. The return of his humor was like spring thawing frost. Bado came back to himself, having retained his heart and soul through it all, just as Tristan ordered. But, the bouts of low spirits were growing a little longer each time. It wasn’t getting any easier for him, and Tristan knew it.

“Well, come on then. Put on something extra dwarfish and be back here by six and we’ll go to the general’s dining tent together. You know how much they subscribe to the mystique of my exotic bodyguard. Might as well make an entrance so we live up to their expectations, I suppose.” Bado looked thoughtful and rubbed at his chin, still visible despite the advancing of his side burns down his jawline with each passing month.

“ _Technically_ , everything I create is ‘dwarfish’ make… since I’m a dwarf and I made it.” He said slowly. Tristan grunted and thumped his arm again affectionately.

“You know what I mean. They want to see that furred collar all your clan wears. You gotta look the part or you’ll disappoint them.” He countered. Bado looked flatly at him and then gestured at himself.

“Aside from my ears there ain’t one thing about me that looks dwarfish…” He grumbled “and I ain’t ever looked the part either so I don’t see why I should be hung up about it now.” Tristan rolled his eyes.

“Stubborn punk…” He growled, “You gonna make me order you or what?” Bado chuckled and waved him off.

“Nah, if you’re that adamant don’t waste your breath. I’ll do it.” He sighed, but smiled mildly as he turned to go back to his tent and assume the costume suitable to his role. Tristan nodded as he left and then sat down on a camp stool outside his own tent and felt somewhat guilty.

There are always times when the rational part of one conflicts with the emotional part. But regardless of how many times one goes through it, it never ceases to be unpleasant. Of course having the reputation as a fearsome fighter and the mystery and novelty of being a member of a rare and reclusive culture was advantageous, but still… He knew he was pushing his young friend more and more to wear a mask that had little to do with who he really was. Bado would do as asked. That much Tristan knew beyond a doubt. He’d practically surrendered himself to Tristan’s will without question in exchange for the protection the Knight Commander had offered him, and he trusted the older knight implicitly.

The cold, logical part of Tristan insisted this was an ideal combination. He could shape the dwarf’s identity before others into something fabricated to be so menacing that it very well could be considered armor in its own right, and all it cost was the isolation of the young man from everyone but Tristan, himself. His stomach dropped in an unpleasant pang of guilt. Only he knew the gentle nature of the dwarven knight’s real self. And only he _could_ know if he was going to keep him safe. With the towering reputation Bado’s talents and size and unusual origins had already built up, he was in danger from the machinations of any jealous colleague or clever enemy who became privileged with the knowledge. Tristan sighed heavily.

‘Don’t lose yourself’, ‘Be too terrifying to fight’… Tristan had given the boy what were probably conflicting orders. How could a pacifist garner a monster’s reputation? How could a man live in contradiction for an indefinite number of years, all for the slim and uncertain hope of someday finding freedom?  It hurt to be trusted to deliver this kid from suffering, when he knew there was no guarantee he could, regardless of what he did with that trust.

“Hey.” A familiar deep voice called, snapping Tristan out of his train of thought “What’s with that face? You got a stomach ache or something?”

Tristan looked up and up toward the extent of Bado’s significantly greater height towering over him where he sat and shook off his dark thoughts.

“That was quick.” He muttered.

“Not particularly.” Bado returned, eyeing his mentor suspiciously. “What were you thinkin’ about?” Tristan shook his head.

“Nothing you need to add to your worries. C’mon. Let’s get over there before they eat all the good grub, themselves.” He stood up and stalked off toward the general’s temporarily established tent in the Southernmost part of the camp, furthest from the front lines. The Knight Commander was careful not to look at his protégé’s expression as he did so.

They walked in silence all the way there until a surly looking guard looked them up and down at the front of the fine, overlarge tent, squinting suspiciously at Bado and then averting his eyes as Tristan glared him down. Once inside the officer’s tent, both the Knight Commander and his dwarven attendant set down their greatswords leaning against a weapon rack and seated themselves unobtrusively a little to the left of the center of the long dining table that had been hastily assembled specifically for this occasion. In spite of Tristan’s earlier comment, they were, in fact, the first ones there… unfashionably early. The table hadn’t even been fully prepared and set yet, with only half the needed cutlery and plates arranged.

Tristan felt the glance of his friend flicker to his face and away again and knew the boy had not dropped the subject from his mind yet, but even so he did not inquire again.

The dinner was just as awful as the pair had expected. The absentee administration of his majesty’s army by fat old politicians wearing outdated and ill-fitting military dress could hardly qualify under anybody’s definition of ‘generalship’ but their own. It rankled bitterly to have to nod politely in response to their ignorant notions on the movements and activities of the army and yet still be required to defer to their ‘authority’ on such matters. Worse yet, they all stared unabashedly at Bado’s countenance and clothing as if he were a circus animal put there for nothing but their amusement. But, unpleasant as all that was, Tristan would have gladly traded back for it once the meal got _worse._

“And how did you come by this one, eh?” a balding, white-mustached old buffoon, General Whittlecrown demanded with a condescending gesture toward Bado and a conspiratorial grin directed at Tristan. “Conscription doesn’t include point-ears, and all, so what did you have to trade to get him, hm?” Tristan stared at the man in perturbed shock, uncertain whether the meaning he initially read in the words could really be the man’s authentic sentiment. Bado glanced up when the stubby fingers of the old general pointed at him but said nothing, instead focusing on calmly cutting pieces from a somewhat tough steak they had been served and chewing with very deliberate steadiness. Whittlecrown took the silence as invitation to elaborate.

“Where on earth _did_ you find him, Starson? Raid their village did you? I hear the wares are tip top so appropriation seems astute, after all, but I did not expect you to take the damned blacksmith, too! Hahaha!” The ‘gentleman’ laughed merrily, a booming belly laugh fully ignorant of any insult he may have offered. Another of the visiting gentlemen, a lean man with hungry, mud-colored eyes and pale hair of no particular color added his own abominable commentary to the conversation as well:

“Oh, but sir! Treaty or no, if there’s more to be had like this one, we ought to fold them into the conscription decree, don’t you agree? Why, just look at him! If his fighting matches his reputation and the _look_ of him, I’ll wager any one dwarf would be worth _ten_ Noradian-born conscripts!”

“A fair point, I should think! Come now, boy.” A hawk-faced man to the right of Whittlecrown rolled his wrist in an expectant gesture at Bado, who looked up at him with a carefully neutral expression. “What’s the count? How many of those Empire bastards have you put out of their damned misery? I’ll bet their guts are scattered in your wake when you draw your sword, eh? Do you keep their ears or teeth or fingers for the tally? I’m sure I heard somewhere that you do.” Bado lifted his gaze to the man’s face, quietly set down his knife and fork, and swallowed before speaking.

“No, sir.” His deep voiced rumbled quietly. “At a certain point, even small trophies like those would become a burden to carry around… and I’ve already lost count, at any rate.” Only Tristan heard how deliberately the young man was controlling his voice or noticed the tension in his body. Tristan ground his teeth and battled fiercely with his own will not to bury the steak knife clutched in his hand in the hawk-faced man’s arm. He had to master himself and put a stop to this but he could not yet trust his tongue not to get both of them hanged with what he _wanted_ to say to the generals.

“Hohoho!” Whittlecrown boomed once more, pointing shamelessly at the dwarf from across the table again, “Get me a battalion of fellows like him and we’ll slaughter those Empire scum in time to go home for New Years!”

“And so articulate! I half-expected him to bark!” The hawk-faced man added jovially. “Can you read dispatches or must all your orders come by messenger or Starson’s own mouth?” Bado blinked again. The point of his right ear twitched slightly.

“I can read, sir. Back home we trade with humans often enough. It’s why we speak common, sir.” He explained, careful to show no emotion. More than likely he, too, wasn’t in a position to trust himself beyond the carefully emotionless responses.

“Hah! You want one for your own, don’t you, Broadstreet?” General Whittlecrown guffawed, elbowing the man next to him as he did, “To watch for _assassins_ , perhaps? Or just to intimidate your opponents in the courts, I suppose?”

“ _Well_?” Demanded Broadstreet, “Who couldn’t use an obedient guard dog, especially one his size?”

‘Obedient? _Obedient??’_ thought Tristan furiously. He certainly didn’t want to admit it but perhaps it was the truth in the comment that stung him most painfully. He hadn’t _earned_ the kid’s trust. He was simply the only choice as far as allies went; the only one he _could_ trust. And here he was, driving the man to become what he hated… further and further. Not just forcing his hands to kill in battle but demanding he pretend a brute’s character to these pompous, arrogant old bastards for their sheer entertainment and to let them feel even greater confidence in their superiority by contrast to this _curiosity_ wearing the knight’s uniform. Tristan’s clenched teeth rang bright silvery pain through his skull and jaw as the muscles in his throat and face tightened even further. He could bear it no longer.

“My lords,” He said stiffly as he abruptly stood up from the table and snatched up his sword from the wall, “I’m afraid I have only just recalled a duty I must attend to. I apologize, but we must go.” He gestured to Bado and the young man stood up from the table, careful not to overturn the comparatively small chair and also to duck the low ceiling of the tent.

“Still haven’t learned how to delegate, eh, Starson?” Whittlecrown chided, chuckling enough to make his swollen belly bob up and down. “Surely it can wait until after dinner at least?”

“I am sorry sirs, but it is quite time-sensitive.”

“At least lend us your pet for a spell.” Broadstreet added, swirling a dark amber liquor in a glass with a lazy gesture as his eyes went from Tristan to Bado and back again. “I have so much yet to ask him.” Tristan bowed a stiff apology.

“I’m afraid I can’t spare him, gentlemen. Good night.” He turned and left the tent with Bado’s tall figure behind him like a shadow, pointedly ignoring the dissatisfied noises and displeased murmurs that went through the generals’ table as the pair of them disappeared from the tent back out into the night.

The fury in his breast spurred Tristan to long, aggressive strides as he strode further and further from the tent and towards the training grounds on the opposite side of the camp, but Bado did not need to push himself at all to keep up. His long legs carried him just behind his commander and he spoke not a word until he’d followed him all the way into one of the sparring circles and Tristan whirled on him.

“Damn those old bastards and let their tongues be eaten by vultures! _Damn them!_ ” He swore furiously. Bado blinked at him in mild surprise and then smiled slightly.

“I hope that was not all on my account, sir.” He said with a hint of a laugh behind his words. Tristan stared at him and blinked stupidly.

“What?” Bado asked, smiling more broadly at his mentor’s expense, then donned a look of dawning comprehension and nodded his head. “This is the first time you’ve heard that garbage, huh?” He asked. The Knight Commander shook his head slightly, not comprehending or perhaps not _wanting_ to comprehend his friend’s meaning. Bado sighed and shook his head, then looked at Tristan with genuine affection in his eyes. “Everyone below you doesn’t dare say a word against your hand-picked guard dog, Tristan. But these guys don’t give a damn what you think so they aren’t even trying to filter what they say. You don’t need to worry about my pride. I’m used to it. But... I appreciate the gesture, just the same.”

Tristan’s shoulders drooped and he looked fretfully at his friend and then away, shamed by his own ignorance.

“This why you were always at odds with the other squires?” He asked quietly after a minute or two.

“That and the fact they all knew I’d flatten them in a fair fight.” Bado returned slyly with a smirk.

“I’m sorry.” Tristan said, shaking his head again. “I… didn’t know… but I ought to have.” Bado merely shrugged and continued to stare fondly at him, apparently amused to have known more than his mentor for once. They just stood there a long while as the wheels turned in Tristan’s head, his eyes wandering from one direction to another as he reasoned and remembered alternately, putting pieces together. Finally, he looked steadily at Bado once more and spoke:

“Draw your sword.” He said simply, “Spar with me.”

“What?” Bado returned with an incredulous snort. Tristan gestured around them.

“We’re in the right place for it. C’mon. I want to know what it’s like being on the receiving end of my _attack dog_.” He said, the last words dripping with sarcasm. Bado shrugged and drew his enormous greatsword, holding it before him in both hands with no evidence of exertion. His gaze bent on Tristan but his body was relaxed except for the muscles required to heft the sword and hold his own bulk upright. Tristan drew his own sword and gently tapped the blade of Bado’s with it to initiate the dual.

The pair circled each other slowly, eyes apparently unfocused as they readied themselves to respond to any flicker of movement whether directly in their sight or in the periphery. Tristan lunged forward, luring Bado’s blade up to defend and parrying the his counterstrike before throwing a kick to the younger man’s abdomen. Bado grunted and his body stiffened, allowing the force of the blow to drive his whole frame back a few inches, his feet scraping over the dirt, rather than absorb the shock of impact into this stomach.

“You never told me you don’t fight fair.” He jeered with a half-wild grin at his mentor.

“No such thing as fair in a real fight.” Tristan barked. “Honor is for duals. When it’s you or the enemy whatever you have to do to survive is fair for that fight.”

“True enough.” The dwarf returned in his booming, deep voice. Then he rushed forward and swung once, twice, three times and amid the clashing metal sounds of sword on sword Tristan never saw his big square hand flash out and snatch the ostentatious decorative dagger from its jeweled scabbard on the Knight Commander’s belt. With a sudden burst of hitherto withheld strength, Bado forced Tristan’s sword point-down in the dirt with his own and bared the dagger close to his friend’s throat, stopping just shy of real danger to his life should Tristan flail in response to the threat. Tristan stilled, and the pair stood silently eyeing one another for a few breaths.

“But this is neither…” Bado added, flipping the knife so the blade was gripped in his gloved hand and passing it back to his mentor as he loosed the entangled crossbars of the swords and relaxed his stance into calm, casual standing once more. “I already know you won’t bury your investment and you know I won’t murder my benefactor. There’s little point in pretending anything else, so why are we even going through these motions?”

“Maybe because I deserve to be bashed around by you?” Tristan offered defiantly. Bado blinked in surprise and his lips parted slightly but no words came in his deep voice. Perhaps he hadn’t realized just how guilty his ‘benefactor’ felt.

“Sir…” He began quietly a moment later. Tristan interrupted him.

“You’re not just an _investment_ , Bado…” he said in a low, strained voice. Bado swallowed and stared unblinking into Tristan’s blue eyes.

“What, then?” He asked cautiously, sounding somehow ready to be hurt, betrayed, or thrown away. Tristan sheathed his sword and stepped forward, facing the younger man squarely and looking up into his sea-storm eyes.  He clapped a hand onto the dwarf’s muscular arm just below the shoulder and squeezed.

“A _friend_?” He said incredulously. Bado drew in an involuntarily deep breath and stared bewildered at Tristan for a half-second before smiling and sagging into a relieved sigh. He looked down away from Tristan’s eyes, swallowed again and gave a brief answer in a half-choked version of his usual basso voice:

“Yeah…”


	7. The Price of Loyalty

“One of these days that hunk of junk is going to break on you.” Bado muttered to Tristan as the Knight Commander loosed his greatsword from his sheath and steadied Vashon as the steed fidgeted beneath him. The sword had lasted him a good many years and he frowned at his right-hand-man whenever the tall dwarf made such comments. He looked back out over the silent, foggy foothills that were today’s battleground and noting that the enemy was still a few minutes off from being within range of a charge, he raised the sword in a lateral gesture that meant ‘hold’, and then turned to speak to the tall, muscular young man standing next to him.

“Perhaps if you _told_ me what’s so unsatisfactory about my sword?” He growled flippantly. Bado glanced sidelong at him and the slightest shadow of a smile touched the corners of his mouth and eyes. The dwarf was so tall it was almost like speaking to another man in the saddle, despite the fact his heels were on the ground. Over the months since the two knights had begun to call one another friends they also began to treat one another as equals except in the presence of other members of the hierarchy that might object to the notion or denounce the Knight Commander for it. This brazen commentary the tall dwarven knight would give was only one of the ways in which the two men had become more practiced in being at ease around one another.

“No need. Just let me make you a better one, already.” Bado said calmly.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Tristan grumbled in reply, gripping the familiar hilt firmly as if he anticipated someone taking it from his hand.

“It may not be broke, but it ain’t _good_ , either.” The dwarf returned in a muttered tone of complaint. Then, in a smooth gesture that could only have been second nature to him, the tall, point-eared soldier reached upward and drew not one, but two enormous greatswords from a pair of crossed scabbards strapped to his back. The scabbards themselves supplemented his armor, fretted as they were with metal bands.

In each of his large, angular hands he clutched the hilt of a twin blade, wielding them as if they were the short dual blades common to small, fast warriors. Only in his case each of his two swords was nearly the height of one of those small, quick warriors. Each hilt bore the likeness of a long serpentine dragon winding around the hilt and a little ways up the length of the blade, its sharp little steel wings forming parrying hooks some distance from the crossguard. For any other man alive, or at least any man Tristan had ever seen or met, it would have been impossible to heft even one of the enormous weapons with any speed or grace. Each was outsized even for most Zweihӓnders and easily weighing more than most decorated, ceremonial greatswords, let alone anything generally used for actual combat.

True they were a little over-decorated with their dragon motif, and Tristan knew better than to think it was in the gentle giant’s nature to love ostentatious objects such as these, but Bado had taken his Commander’s advice to heart and it had worked. His curious, foreign-looking armor, which stood out from the rest of the army like a black cat on snow, only reinforced the savage, supernaturally powerful appearance of the gigantic man. Tristan wasn’t sure if Bado really knew it, but the undeniable success of the be-too-scary-to-fight strategy was owed mostly to the young man’s size and strength, rather than the props and costumes he applied to himself. Even so, the dark, gleaming plate mail he had crafted to his own extreme proportions and his terrible twin greatswords certainly didn’t discredit his fearsome countenance.

The Knight Commander had seen whole units of enemy men melt in fear and break apart into scattered, fleeing deserters before the whirlwind of well-armed fury that was the Noradian Knighthood’s only dwarven soldier. To be fair, If he had seen such a giant man swinging such oversized blades in his direction, Tristan would have been stupid, and therefore unlikely, to stand and face such a force alone. He certainly didn’t blame the enemy for their cowardice in the face of his point-eared ‘weapon’.

As great as Bado’s strength and skills were, however, it could not have been these alone which tipped the scales in favor of Noradians in many of the major conflicts within the last few months. Even so, the reputation the younger man had garnered had accomplished whatever Bado’s actual performance could not, and filled in the gaps in the enemy’s imaginations with terror.

Now as the enemy drew close enough for a charge, he lived up to his reputation. He bristled with fury as he held the two swords out, brandishing them at mid-guard facing the enemy. His stance and fighting style was wholly unique, some of it taken from dual-sword practice, and some from standard greatsword maneuvers and some original inventions that Tristan was fairly certain only someone with Bado’s size and strength could pull off. The Knight Commander held his sword higher, poised to drop its point toward the enemy and signal the charge. Tristan eyed his right-hand man sidelong. Bado glared darkly at the advancing enemy lines, his blue-gray eyes apparently full of cold fury. It was a pretty good act, Tristan had to admit. If he weren’t already so familiar with the tall dwarf’s gentle nature, he’d have bought it, and probably pissed himself if he were in the enemy’s shoes right about now.

Just as the Knight commander prepared to swing his sword forward and launch the brunt of his forces at the enemy, Bado drew in a huge breath through his nose, his chest expanding until it belled out and the straps between his armor pieces strained around his ribcage. Tristan dropped the sword and grimaced at the same time, preparing his ears just in time for them to be bombarded by a battle roar like a gigantic bear supplemented by the bright tones of a trumpet.

As soon as Bado gave his battle cry, all together the rest of the Noradians added their own roaring challenge, though none of them could hold a candle to the dwarven knight’s display of vocal force. The deafening cacophony rang out over the field like thunder and the enemy lines faltered slightly as the soldiers involuntarily flinched away from the sound. In the same moment the Royal Seventh Infantry Brigade charged, pouring down the hillside from the advantageous high ground onto the enemy like red-hot molten iron swallowing up and melting away everything in their path.

Bado marched at a determined pace as the smaller soldiers flowed around him and forward. It was a deliberate tactic to give the enemy soldiers plenty of time to watch the huge, savage-looking man with his exotic armor and unfamiliar fighting style stamping toward them with cold, calm steadiness. All his movements were relatively slow but his long strides carried him toward his prey with great speed, all the same. This gave all the more weight to the terrible contrast once the dwarf actually moved to strike. His speed was nothing like the rapid maneuvers a small, lithe warrior, but it _was_ two or even three times faster than the gigantic man looked like he _ought_ to be able to move. With a snarling growl, he sprang forward, lashing first with one blade and then the other, each one guarding him alternately while the other sliced forward to attack. His target had been a mounted captain, by the bands on his pauldrons and the first mighty swing severed the head of the man’s steed clean off. The bisected body shimmered brightly for a moment and then collapsed into an amorphous mass of silvery light before shooting off to the east at blinding speed.

The return of the horse, a monster like all others, to the forest of beginnings was owed to the retornen magic the Dwarven Blacksmith had labored to imbue in the weapons he crafted. Mostly, knights never bothered with such things, but it did not surprise Tristan, knowing as he did Bado’s fondness for monsters. He would not have killed one if he could compel it by magic to go back to its mystic home on the other side of the veil between this world and the forest of beginnings. Tristan also knew that his friend had known perfectly well that once the horse disappeared, the man that had been sitting atop it would fall flat on his back, barely slipping under the second swing of the dwarven knight’s attack and keeping his life by the slimmest of margins.

The rapidity and ferocity of his first strike made an impression no less terrifying for the survival of the formerly mounted captain. Immediately faced with a warrior of mythic proportions and demigod-like strength, the empire soldiers scattered like mice before Bado, some even throwing down their weapons to lighten their burden as they sprinted away as fast as their legs could carry them.

The sight of the enemy fleeing at first contact with the huge dwarven figurehead of the seventh brigade’s army put fire and surety in the rest of Tristan’s men. They surged forward, turning the faltering struggle into a rout as the empire forces broke and ran like frightened chickens, all pretense of rank and formation thrown asunder in their hurry to retreat in hopes of survival.

Bado straightened and glowered after the enemy, showing little but disgust for the cowardly display. Once again, only Tristan knew better. He knew without a doubt that if it weren’t for the need to maintain his frightening, bloodthirsty persona, the dwarf would be whooping for the joy and relief that he and his comrades had managed to send the enemy running scared without a real fight, and without real need for substantial casualties, either. He sheathed his blades onto his back and turned to Tristan with a half-smile about his mouth.

“How’s that, sir?” he called in a booming, clear voice full of pride and triumph, nothing like his character following a battle in which he’d killed.

“Couldn’t ask for better.” Tristan barked back approvingly as he jumped down from the saddle and sheathed his own sword. He looked about him at the smattering of dead or dying enemy soldiers upon the ground. Their own losses had been few; so few, in fact, that the only corpse bearing Noradian uniform in sight was only a few feet from where he’d dismounted. He moved over to stand over it, frowning. Bado approached too, his face settling into a grim expression as he saw what Tristan was about.

The large soldier was sprawled face-down on top of a very small, slender specimen of the enemy as if he had died on the smaller soldier’s sword only to crush his unfortunate killer beneath the weight of his armored frame as he fell atop him. The Knight Commander and his right-hand man stared down at the figure in some perplexity. Tristan had not been far from this spot when the fighting began, and so he found it difficult to believe he would not have noticed if one small pocket of the fighting had grown fiercer than all around it. But then again, every battle, no matter how well-ordered, had the potential to devolve into the chaos of a murderous street fight at a thousand different points on the battlefield and at a thousand different individual moments while the battle lasted.

“Hm.” Tristan grunted briefly as he mused on this, then he turned to walk away, not wishing to dwell on a single death in such an otherwise perfect outcome to the battle.

He had barely taken two or three steps when a sudden rustling sound combined with the scraping of armor against itself and other objects lanced through the crisp, mid-morning air. The sharp speed of the sound was what caught his attention, even before Tristan heard a rapid inhalation cross Bado’s clenched teeth as the big man instantly transformed into his fighting self.

The Knight Commander spun, drawing his sword as he twisted around, but everything seemed to be moving only a fraction of the speed of reality. The dark, lithe form of the enemy soldier in his closed helm and tight, light armor was extended across the space between where he had been lying on the ground moments prior and where Tristan now stood. A long, narrow dagger with thick crossbars turning tight corners to point parallel to the blade like a miniature pitchfork and gripped in the assassin’s hand jutted forward toward Tristan’s throat, where his armor was weak when not completed by a helm of his own. Muscle memory accomplished what the active command of his brain could not have, drawing the sheathed sword on his belt halfway out of the sheath, just enough to catch the pronged blade and stop it inches from his neck.

In the flash of an instant, Tristan thought he saw a maliciously triumphant glitter behind the dark slits in the assassin’s helm. Then the second of the enemy’s lean arms flickered to the handle of his weapon faster than the blink of an eye, gripped it in a curious hold, and twisted it violently as if wrenching the crank arm of a machine. The hilt in Tristan’s hand gave a sudden jerk and an intolerably loud, ringing sound lashed at his ears as bright, silvery-white flashes of light dazzled his eyes.

Tristan staggered back, the tension suddenly released from his sword arm and stared in dumbstruck, openmouthed shock as the assassin flicked the pronged dagger and cast aside the long point-end of his greatsword held fast between the tines of the weapon in his hand. The blade in the Knight Commander’s hand was broken off neatly halfway through the forte, a crisp diagonal broken edge of steel glinting at an unfamiliar angle where the blade should have continued another two feet.

With a triumphant snarl, the assassin lunged, once again bearing his small blade directly for the Knight Commander’s throat as he sprang. Still off balance, Tristan felt his feet stagger back another step, but there would be no defending himself this time. He was halfway to falling onto his back, already, and his attacker was already hurtling toward him from a powerful, grounded leap.

Lily’s sweet face with her soft brown hair and blue eyes flashed through Tristan’s mind with a spasm of denial and regret.

It was over in a long, drawn-out instant, distorted to be impossibly slow by the adrenaline pulsing in the Knight Commander’s veins. Between one rapid heartbeat and the next, the assassin vanished from the space directly before Tristan. Now, having completed the step forward and the swing that had swept the attacker aside, Bado’s boots scraped the pebbles and soil beneath him as he halted his momentum. His eyes were wide and savage, with pupils constricted to pinpoints, and his teeth were bared and clenched. One of his enormous greatswords was loosed and gripped in both his huge hands, used for once in the manner traditional for its build. Tristan’s gaze searched sideways as the body of the man who had tried to kill him tumbled through the air toward the ground a pace or two to his right. The dark, helmed head separated from the shoulders of the figure and spun as it hurtled toward the ground in its own trajectory.

As the head struck the ground at an oblique angle, the helm came loose, and head and armor disbanded from one another, coming to rest a foot or two apart on the dry-packed earth. A long, glossy tail of black hair, smooth and fine as silk, arrayed itself all about the head it was attached to. Long, narrowly pointed ears reached out from the head on either side, studded and pierced with silvery jewelry set with beautiful red stones glinting like fire in their inner facets; the ears of an elf.

Tristan’s heart felt as if it had lunged into his mouth. Just as the head ceased to roll, the face upon it faced them, graceful, feminine features contorted into an expression of shock and wrath. Two dark eyes with long lashes blinked in confusion once… twice, and then went glassy over the fixed, venomous hatred now directed from the dead eyes at Bado, who was staring down at it with a face just as unforgettable as the porcelain-white complexion and ruby-red lips of the woman-assassin he’d just slain.

 Tristan watched, transfixed as his friend stared, frozen himself, at the body and the head he’d thrown to the ground with a single sword strike. His face paled and turned gray, his mouth tightening into a thin line, a mere slash across his face. The Knight Commander thought for a moment by his ashen complexion that the dwarf might drop to his hands and knees and throw up, but their comrades close by had heard and seen the momentary commotion and had begun to come forward to see what had happened. Bado’s huge, angular hands clenched into fists to hide how much they trembled, and he breathed slow and controlled through his nose, his mouth still clamped shut, everything about him strained with silent, frantic horror just barely held down beneath the surface.

Tristan swallowed and made to move toward his friend. Bado flinched and shot him a warning glance, fierce and desperate. He stopped and looked away from the dwarf’s face, knowing what the look had meant.

They’d spoken before about the fragile state of Bado’s nerves following a violent battle. He’d explained the necessity that the younger knight never show himself undone the way Tristan had found him following his first battle, and Bado had explained in his turn that he did not think he could hold it together unless Tristan treated him as if he were made of iron. ‘If you look at me like I might break… I probably will.” Bado had said, almost in a whisper, during the conversation in the dimness of Tristan’s tent after night had already swallowed up the camp.

Searching for something other than his friend’s huge frame, Tristan’s gaze scraped over the still form of the dead assassin on the ground again. If he thought about it with the colder, more rational parts of himself, Tristan could not find a reason one should be more or less sickened by the act of slaying woman than a man. Either way it was murder. And especially in this case, the woman had clearly been trying to kill him. Bado had saved his life, at the price of hers. The situation was as it should be; as it had to be.  Yet, knowing his young friend had never raised his hand against a woman before, it did not surprise Tristan that Bado found himself more shell shocked than usual in the wake of the act.

Bado wiped his sword off with a cloth tugged from his belt and sheathed it, still facing away from the one person who knew the secret storm of horror and self-loathing just beneath his calm façade. Tristan looked at Bado’s broad back with his brow creased and his jaw set.

“Gods and Dragons!” Brusc’s gravelly voice suddenly sounded beside Tristan, who flinched slightly at suddenly being addressed. “If every soldier had a partner who guarded his back so carefully, I doubt we’d lose a single one to the enemy.” The gruff man continued approvingly, his eyes looking in Bado’s direction too. The difference was where an indifferent mask hiding sorrow adorned Tristan’s features, Brusc’s beady eyes glittered with pride and the wrinkles in his leathery face suggested he might be smiling under his bushy mustache.

Bado tucked the cloth back into a little pouch on his belt and looked down at the ground beside the corpse. He bent to one knee, descending from his great height to pluck something up off the ground. He turned and stepped close to Tristan and Brusc and without looking at the short, stocky man that had been his drill instructor, addressed Tristan, holding out the broken shaft of his sword. Tristan looked into Bado’s blue-gray eyes. He looked perfectly calm now that the initial shock had passed. Repeated practice had made him skilled at burying his feelings. Even so, the laughter was gone from his young friend and he knew well it would not return for some time.

“You want me to admit you were right?” Tristan said, raising an eyebrow. Then he shook his head. “Impossible. I’m extremely vain and stubborn, you know.” Bado’s mouth curved into a shape that would have been a half-smile if his eyes had participated. Any expression looked merely grim on him just now. But, Tristan took the broken blade from Bado’s hand and turned it over in his own. He nodded down at it and then dropped the long shard to the ground beside the dead woman. “I _will_ be needing another, though, I suppose.” He said stiffly. “Can’t have me bumbling around unarmed If I’m to be beset by assassins, now, can we.” Bado shook his head without much energy.

“No, sir. We can’t.” he agreed. “I’ll begin crafting you a replacement as soon as we return.”

“Thank you, soldier.” Tristan confirmed, nodding Briskly. “Let’s go.” He turned and began walking back toward Vashon, his dwarven bodyguard padding behind him like an overlarge, gloomy shadow.


	8. The Offered Escape

Once again empty air of the camp was filled with the rhythmic, metallic clanging as the tall, point-eared blacksmith hammered away at his craft in the wake of the recent battle. His oblong tent sent smoke up from the makeshift chimney all throughout the day, and black crows perched atop the tent poles to bathe in the hot smoke and ash in an effort to banish the insects and parasites in their plumage.

Tristan ducked through the tent flap and entered his young friend’s tent without preamble. It had barely been six hours since the rout that morning followed by his near-assassination. Dutifully the Knight Commander had cleaned himself up and made all the necessary reports and meetings to his subordinates and superiors respectively. Now, finally, he was at liberty to call on the man who’d saved his life that morning and verify that his sanity had not come wholly undone by way of the fresh blood on his hands.

He approached the blacksmith a little gingerly, watching the steady hammer strokes fall on a red-hot shaft of metal upon the anvil and noting how much the younger man had filled out since he’d first appeared in their midst as a skinny teenager with gangly limbs ending in oversized hands and feet. Now his arms and legs were thick with corded muscle and the shirt that stuck to his back with sweat threw the forms and lines of his physique into sharp relief, like a carved statue of heroic masculinity.

Noticing his friend in spite of the cat-like silence of his entrance, the smith half-turned and gave a tiny nod to greet him, saying nothing. His facial expression was still tightly controlled, lines forming around the corners of his mouth where his side burns had recently conquered another inch or so of his jawline.

“Come to see how it’s progressing?” He rumbled in his deep voice, indicating the early beginnings of a new sword placed on the anvil. Tristan shook his head with a mild, unassuming expression.

“No. I have every confidence in your abilities.” He said quietly. “I came to check on _you_ , not the sword.” Tristan sat down on a little portable camp stool off to the side and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands steepled in front of his mouth as he stared steadily at his friend.

Bado stared back at him with conflicted emotions in his face, older looking than his true age. He wasn’t even twenty, but you’d never guess by the way his lifestyle had shaped and carved him into the man standing before the Knight Commander. Tristan doubted anyone but Brusc, himself, and perhaps Fallowheart even knew or remembered how young their dwarven knight really was. The tall young man sighed and lifted the hot metal from the anvil and thrust it into the water barrel, cooling it with a hiss and a plume of steam. He set the thing aside and took a seat, himself, on the cot he’d been issued by the army. It was comically small compared to his stature, and Tristan knew already that Bado always slept on the ground, filling up most the length of his tent with his great height as he lay down.

“What was she doing there?” He murmured, shaking his head in disbelief and denial. Tristan frowned.

“Other than trying to put a knife in my throat?”

“You know what I mean…” Bado returned glumly. “We haven’t seen so much as a single female soldier in all the empire’s forces and on top of that she was an _elf_ , Tristan. I don’t know much about them, but I do know they aren’t allied with the enemy, and they don’t do soldiery the way humans do, either…”

A long pause ate up several seconds between them.

“Do you know why soldiers are generally raised from the male population?” Tristan asked, eventually answering Bado’s question with another. The dwarf looked as if he might answer, but then shook his head slightly and looked away.

“It’s not because women are too frail to fight.” Tristan reasoned, picking up Bado’s dwarven hammer and turning it over in his hands. The dwarf’s eyes followed it. “Females aren’t any weaker than males… but their strength is allocated differently. No, it’s not because they wouldn’t make good soldiers that they are left behind.”

“Why, then?” Bado said dutifully when Tristan paused to let the silence stretch out. The knight commander lifted his cobalt eyes to his friend’s stormy-ocean colored ones.

“It’s because displacing females destabilizes the population.” He said simply in reasonable tones. “It doesn’t take a large number of males to father the next generation, technically speaking. But if we lost a large portion of women from our towns and villages, there would be fewer to become mothers and the populations would invert and then possibly even extinguish themselves.”

“Sounds reasonable, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about killing her.” Bado grumbled coldly. Tristan smiled ruefully.

“I know. My Lily and little Forte are everything to me. I’d die a hundred times and a hundred more to protect them. If the empire began throwing women at us on the battlefield, I daresay a fair portion of our number would falter in battle. Regardless of how I tell myself they are equal to us in strength, I can’t let go of some lizard-brained instinct to protect them.” He looked down at his hands. Bado gave a little huff that might have been the ghost of a bitter laugh.

“Here I thought I was the only freak who joined the humans’ fight.” He said, shaking his head. “I’ve been asking myself what could have possessed her to fight on their side… but who am I to ask that?”

“True enough.” Tristan sighed, “And more than likely we’ll never know her story or why she was there trying to kill me on behalf of the Empire. Life rarely lets us have things tied up in neat little packages.”

“Yeah…” Bado sighed glumly. Tristan looked up and stared at him as the tall dwarf gazed downward, unseeing, while his mind wandered down a path the Knight Commander could not see. Tristan waited through the silence, but the younger man said nothing.

He fidgeted with his gloves as wheels turned in his head. If there was any way of preventing the slow decay of his friend’s spirits so that he would have to watch him fold in on himself until he ceased to be over long years and countless bloody battles… if there was _any_ way…

“Kid…” The Knight Commander said quietly, finally breaking the silence. Bado looked up at him with a weary pall like the impression of a storm cloud in his features. Tristan glanced at the flap-door of the tent meaningfully and then looked back in his friend’s eyes. “I wouldn’t stop you…” His voice was so quiet, he wondered if Bado would even be able to understand him without reading his lips, but the flicker of understanding across the dwarven knight’s blue-gray eyes confirmed he had heard him after all.

Bado glanced at the entrance to the tent and then down at his shoes, swallowing as his mouth tightened. He remained mute.

“You’d be a deserter… You could never come back… and you’d risk being hung if you’re ever caught by the stricter sort of officers… but you’d be free.” He offered in a murmured, somber voice. A wry, sad smile quirked one corner of Bado’s mouth, forming lines in his cheek.

“Free to be just as useless and twice as lost as I ever was?” he countered in a voice just as quiet. Then he shook his head and looked solemnly into Tristan’s cobalt blue eyes. “No…” He breathed, then straightened up slightly in the chair. “This is what I came out here to become. Just because I don’t like it, doesn’t mean I intend to quit… Not until I have some notion of what else I’d even do, anyway.” He looked thoughtful for a beat and then smiled a little offering of affection at Tristan. “Besides,” He added, “I’m your man, now. I owe you. And, I don’t want to give any assassins an easy shot at you because I ran off.”

Tristan smiled in spite of himself. It wasn’t a glad smile, but a sad, knowing one. He’d never talk his friend into fleeing, even to save his own hide. Even knowing how he’d suffered, and how he’d continue to suffer, he could not protect Bado from the choice he’d made himself.

“Thanks… I think I’ve lost a step or two. I hate to admit it, but I need you to watch my back.”

“I know.” The dwarf replied. “I’ll hold up my end of the deal. Don’t worry.” He said in calm, certain tones.

Tristan nodded and stood up. He put a hand on Bado’s shoulder, squeezed firmly once, and then turned to go. As he paused just outside the tent to think on the words he’d just exchanged with his young friend, the sound of Bado standing up and returning the sword in progress to the forge stirred within the canvas walls.

Frowning down at the ground with brow furrowed, the Knight Commander stalked off to his own tent, uneasy in his heart. As he scowled at his boots he silently promised himself he’d find _some_ kind of answer to this problem.


	9. The Unlucky One

The slump of depression Bado usually fell into after he’d spilled the enemy’s blood was different this time. Rather than wallowing or seeking numbness in the abdication of forging non-stop or drinking spirits, a surreal, resigned sort of calm took him. Perhaps someone who didn’t know him well would have taken this as a sign he was adapting to his new life. Perhaps they’d think he was not as severely affected this time. Tristan knew better.

He’d come to know the younger man over the past two years; he knew that under the reserved manner and insecurity of the lost boy there was a gentle, cheerful person who smiled and laughed easily. Bado was meant to be a light-hearted creature, beneath all the woeful circumstance of his life. So, when he had his trusted friend beside him and he had been able to spend some time without violence, that self shone through his gruff exterior like precious metal peeking out from between ordinary, sooty gray rocks.

No matter how calm the enormous dwarven knight appeared to be, Tristan knew he’d not recovered himself unless he began to smile and laugh and tell obnoxious jokes again.

Day by day the blacksmith quietly went about his work with neither complaint nor cheer. He still tended Vashon, a duty he’d maintained since he was a squire, given his talent with beasts and Tristan’s trust in him. Every duty or task Tristan asked of him he executed without reservation, his disposition mild but unsmiling. Every moment he was not needed for soldiery or duties to his Knight Commander, Bado forged iron.

Mostly the dwarven blacksmith made utilitarian pieces of sturdy quality for free as long as the soldier who needed them brought him materials to work with. It gave him something to occupy his time, so he never objected to the growing sense of entitlement the other soldiers had about his works.

There was another side to him, though. All his crafts were of fine practical quality but Tristan was beginning to learn that his young friend was also an artist. He’d made several prototypes for the blade he’d hoped to give to Tristan, but continually proclaimed himself unsatisfied and declared he wished to do it over again. The rejected swords were of superior quality and quite beautiful, for all that dissatisfaction. Tristan showed them to other officers and dropped a hint or two until they began to make offers to buy the weapons. The young dwarf looked a little surprised but at a warning glance from Tristan, put away his naivety and accepted the offered gold graciously, giving in exchange his finest works and thereby earning himself a reputation.

Bado assured Tristan there was nothing he really needed the money for, given that the army provided him everything he really needed, but the Knight Commander insisted his subordinate keep the funds and save them. After all, he reasoned, someday Bado would have another life when his time as a knight was over. Perhaps he’d wish to buy a house and settle somewhere? There were some things one _did_ need money for, after all. So, with only a little reluctance Bado saved what his patrons paid him for his work and continued to refine his craft until his finer weapons and armor were coveted by all around him. He still made more casual products for free to outfit his fellow soldiers, but works for beauty he reserved for commissions and for Tristan.

“You will never be satisfied. Just admit it.” Tristan jibed, one day. He’d finally claimed one of the rejected swords to use ‘temporarily’ while Bado fussed and iterated on his design for the Knight Commander’s true sword. It felt strong and easy in his hand. It was not a light blade, but still the balance and density of the thing was so graceful it was not at all a burden to lift. The dwarf had perfectly tuned it to his friend’s size and strength and wielding it felt as natural as breathing. Tristan honestly could not imagine how it could be improved upon.

“It’s getting close.” Bado would say every time with patience in his voice. But still, he did not smile… or rather, when he did his eyes did not participate in it. They remained weary and distant no matter what shape he bent the rest of his face into. Five weeks had passed since he’d killed the female elven assassin, and Tristan was beginning to worry he’d forget what his friend’s true laugh sounded like. He wrote to Lily about his concerns and she, ever sweetly compassionate to everyone, replied with extraordinarily good sense and reason:

“It seems to me, my love, that your friend does not like what he has become, but the fact you know the real him grounds him and keeps him sane. Perhaps he hasn’t known enough love in his life. Acceptance and support will help him find happiness again, I’m sure. All you can do is be there for him until he finds his way back.”

Tristan sighed as he read her wise words. They may have been true, but they did not give him anything he could really _act_ on… nothing he could _do_ right now to ease his friend’s suffering.

Fallowheart, when consulted on the matter, gave a melancholic reply very typical for his pragmatic persona.

“I told you he’d get torn up. Nobody you really _want_ to know comes through unscathed.” He grumbled. “He is what he is and you can’t change him, Starson. If he’s gonna walk a road that makes him miserable he’s gonna _be_ miserable.” Tristan frowned and left with a reluctant ‘thanks’ for this glum piece of advice.

It was Lieutenant Brusc who finally hit upon something Tristan could get behind. When Tristan confided that he did not think the young man was coping very well, the stout man laughed a booming laugh from behind his bushy mustache. Tristan blinked at this, slightly affronted at the man for laughing at what he considered a fairly grave matter.

“He’s a young buck, Commander. _Very_ young.” He said, and chuckled again as if this clarified everything. Tristan scowled vaguely at the other man for a beat or two. Then, still grinning, Brusc ushered him a little closer. “The nice thing about the young, sir, is that their hearts and minds think and feel everything so _feverishly_. So, for all the extremes they experience, it is quite easy to distract them. You just need something equally as potent as what’s troubling him.” Tristan’s face relaxed from disapproval to curiosity. Brusc read the change and his grin widened, turning rather wolfish. “Get him _laid_ , Commander. I’ll bet that’ll take his mind off things and he’ll be right as rain.” Tristan’s mouth opened slightly in surprise and Brusc guffawed again and clapped him hard on the shoulder. “You used to be a hound dog before your wife came into the picture, right? I’m sure you know somewhere you can take the kid.”

With that, Brusc turned away and resumed his duties, assembling kits for new recruits, complete with a tent, cot, blanket, short sword and shield. Tristan stared after him for a dazed moment or two, then felt his own mouth stretch into a grin.

“Thanks, Brusc.” He called. “You may have something, there.” Brusc saluted in an exaggerated, jovial fashion and went about his business. Tristan, meanwhile, tromped directly to the deep red tent with the chimney where the steady rhythm of a dwarven hammer falling on hot iron rang out all day.

“Hey, Dramhau!” He called with a voice like the bark of a dog. The clanging ceased and Bado twisted around to look at him. He nodded his head in greeting without removing the sword form the anvil or putting down his hammer. His face was impassive as ever. Tristan marched up to him and inclined his head toward the sword in progress. “Put that away for a minute, son. I want to talk to you.” Bado blinked mildly at him twice and looked down at the work in progress.

“I’m almost to a good stopping point.” He said, “Give me a minute or two. We can talk while I work if you don’t mind.” Tristan nodded, still smirking. Bado turned back to the anvil as Tristan sat down on the camp chair on one side of the tent.

“So, what do you want to talk about?” The dwarf asked politely, and without passion.

“You got a girlfriend? Back home, I mean?” Tristan asked without preamble. Bado startled mid swing and directed the hammer to the right, striking the anvil rather than the hot sword. He winced and paused his work.

“No. Why?” He answered laconically.

“Tch.” Tristan scoffed. “It’s a little hard to believe.” Bado turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. His eyes had become brighter and harder for the moment. That spark buoyed Tristan’s hopes. He perked up like a hound on a scent trail.

“Is it?” Bado returned, dubiously.

“Yeah.” Tristan said flatly, pointing at his friend. “You’re a big, butch warhorse and you act like a gentleman off the field. But, before all that, I’d think ladies would come looking for you for your size, alone.” He teased, grinning wolfishly. Bado blushed and twitched backward as if Tristan had thrown something at him unexpectedly.

“I… wouldn’t know.” He said slowly. Tristan’s eyebrow’s shot up. He looked the younger man up and down as Bado shifted uncomfortably under his superior’s gaze.

“You’ve never been with a woman?” He asked with perfect candor. At that, Bado actually snorted and barked out a harsh, monosyllabic laugh.

“Hardly.” He returned, “First of all, dwarf women are not nearly as common as _your_ fair folk.” He explained, gesturing at Tristan with his hammer as he referred to humans.

“No?”

“No. The birth rate for girls is quite a bit lower for us. Single dwarf men are like pebbles on a beach.”

“Huh… is that right…” Tristan mumbled, considering the notion.

“I was never the type to go for fooling around with other guys, either, so I’m without experience altogether.” The dwarf shrugged. Tristan blinked at him with a mildly astonished face. Bado quirked an eyebrow at his Commander in confusion. “What?” he asked, after a moment.

“That, uh… that a common thing?” The Knight Commander ventured, his cocky attitude faltering at this new revelation. Bado blinked at him again.

“Well… yeah. Too many single men, remember? Those that _are_ attracted to other guys have plenty to choose from. They share luck with dwarven women that way. Plenty of fish in the sea, unless you’re a straight male dwarf.” He shrugged and sighed.

“But it’s not… I mean it’s _normal_ , and all?” Tristan questioned, rolling his wrist in a vaguely uncertain gesticulation. Bado’s brow furrowed and he frowned at Tristan in thoughtful confusion for a minute or so. Tristan stared in blank, awkward silence right back at the younger man.

“Okay, let me turn the question around on you so I can figure out what the heck you’re getting at.” Bado said finally, losing deference for his superior to his familiarity in the momentary storm of confusion. “Is it _not_ normal for human men to sleep with one another?” Tristan actually laughed a giddy, incredulous laugh at this.

“So, there _is_ room for culture shock between you and me.” He chuckled. Bado stared at him blankly. Tristan finished his laugh and mustered his words to explain. “No, kid. It’s actually fairly taboo in Noradian _human_ culture to have lovers who are the same gender.”

“Huh.” The big man blinked as he considered what Tristan told him. “Well I understand with women, but not even guys, huh?”

“Your people don’t approve women pairing with other women?”

“Nah. Dwarven women all become mothers, since there’s so few of them we can’t really have it any other way. And, ya can’t be a mother without someone to be the father, you know?”

“S’pose not.” Tristan muttered. Then he glanced up at Bado’s face again. “So you never, uh…”

“Slept with a guy?” Bado asked with perfect calm, “Nah. I’m of the _unlucky_ ones. I just don’t feel it for men.” He laughed under his breath. “The only company I get in bed is my own.”

Tristan exhaled through his nose, staring at his friend in mild surprise, still. Dwarves really must not think twice about it, he thought in astonishment.

“But if you’re going to start talking like I ought to be bedding human women,” Bado continued, snapping Tristan out of his thoughts, “I’ll tell you it hardly seems sensible. I don’t want to go around fathering a bunch of half-dwarves with strangers, after all.” He shrugged with resignation in his voice, as though there were nothing in the world that could overturn this fact. Tristan barked out an incredulous laugh.

“Well no one said you should impregnate anyone!” He returned. Bado tilted his head and made a face of exasperated confusion.

“Then why—“ The dwarf began in frustrated tones, but Tristan cut him off.

“Divine dragons, man! Are you trying to tell me dwarves don’t do birth control?” The Knight Commander said, flabbergasted. The befuddled look the tall dwarf gave him told him all he needed to know. “Jumpin’ junebugs, boy!” He shook his head, hardly believing what he’d learned. “Sex doesn’t have to mean fathering any children!”

The sheer disbelief in the Commander’s voice seemed to shame the younger man. His pointed ears had turned red, as did his face, and he shifted uncomfortably and said nothing, embarrassed by his own ignorance in front of the older man. Tristan sighed and rubbed at his brow with the thumb and forefingers of one hand.

“Okay, okay… Listen, here, kid: Human women are about as abundant as human men, sometimes more so. We have methods of _preventing_ pregnancy, which people use when they want to have sex for pleasure without worrying about all that.” Bado kept staring at him, blinking rapidly as though the information were tumbling down over his head faster than he could absorb it. Tristan stared back, stupefied momentarily at his friend’s total naivety. “You know,” he gestured expectantly, “for _fun_?”

“I…” The dwarf tried to reply, but faltered, “We, uh… we don’t prevent pregnancy where I come from. It’s always celebrated.” He cleared his throat nervously, then hastily added, “Not that we don’t think sex is fun, it’s just…” Tristan waved him off and stood up.

“I’ve heard enough.” He exhaled a weary breath and then pointed at the half-made sword on the anvil. “Put that away, now. We’re leaving.” Bado blinked at him, but then looked relieved that the awkward conversation full of so many unexpected revelations for both parties was over at last. He cooled the metal in the water barrel, set it aside, and put down his hammer. Tristan held open the tent flap and jerked his head toward the entrance with an expectant stare. Bado followed his direction obediently and ducked under the tent flap and own into the daylight. The Knight Commander followed him and then led the way toward the East.


	10. Seeking A Remedy

Bado glanced sidelong dubiously at Tristan as the Knight Commander halted in front of an elaborately decorated building. The tall, ostentatious structure bore red shutters and ornate brackets carved as voluptuous fairies and mermaids holding up the corners of the roof around each of its 4 floors. The top floor occupied a smaller footprint than the rest with slanting angles in the rooftop and an octagonal window like a haughty eye looking down at the street below. Paper lanterns were strung all around the various architectural flourishes, glowing peach and red and orange in the gloom of evening.

The two knights stood outside in a chilly smattering of rain. Tristan’s cape shrugged off most of the water, but the furred collar of the dwarf’s clothing and his dark hair and sideburns were beginning to flatten down to dripping, bedraggled caricatures of his usual visage.

The Knight Commander inclined his head toward the crimson and gold painted door of the building and the younger man grasped the handle and opened it for his commanding officer without visible objection.

The air within was thick and warm and heavily perfumed with a mixture of scents, some as delicate as wildflowers, and others as cloying as fermenting fruit. Bado furrowed his brow and blinked several times as the dim, rosy colored light of the interior dazzled his night-adjusted eyes. For Tristan, all the sights and sounds of the place brought back a slew of memories written in all five of his senses and his head swam with the storm of sudden recollection.

Almost as soon as the door shut behind them, a lovely young woman with a plump, curvaceous figure, all convex curves and healthy, glowing skin, appeared just before them while he dallied in the daze of nostalgia. Her breasts were barely contained by the deep-cut collar of her dress, if a thing that only covered her more intimate regions below by virtue of the men’s higher vantage point could really even be called a dress. Long stockings wrapped her thick legs, tipped with dainty, cherubic feet in ruby colored slippers to match the décor. She flipped some of her brown curls out of her eyes and batted heavily made-up eyelashes at the pair of them, her eyes lingering on Bado longer.

“Well hello there, handsome knights.” She purred in a voice like velvet and honey, “You boys thirsty for a drink or is it _companionship_ you chiefly seek?”

“Ooh!” Another feminine voice mewled shrilly from nowhere. Before Bado had apparently come to terms with the sight of the first woman, a younger one appeared, as slender and waif-like as the first was voluptuous and full-figured. Bado blinked in the newcomer’s direction with startled fascination. This one wore something even less an outfit and more a costume, with a ribbon tied at her throat and nothing but long, patterned tights and an elaborately laced bodice to cover her girl’s figure. The long, unbroken silhouette of her thigh around her soft, round buttocks and the tapering curve of her waist was perfectly plain to see, as if she wore nothing at all. Tristan watched Bado glance between the two women once or twice and swallow nervously.

“I want the tall one! You got to pick first last time, Shan!” The delicate woman chirped to her friend.

“Now, Elsie,” The plump woman replied, combing from the tips of Bado’s pointed ears down to his big feet with her eyes as she bit her red-painted lip. “Looks like there’s plenty of him to go around. No need to be selfish.” Tristan took a moment to smirk as he watched the tall young man squirm, apparently overwhelmed by the appearance of not one, but _two_ amorous females so suddenly in their midst. A bright red hue had crept up in his face and ears and one of the pointed things was twitching every few seconds.

“We’re here to see Madame Alexandria.” Tristan explained in a polite, playful voice, stepping in front of his fellow knight to intercept one of the girls and catching up Elsie’s porcelain-pale hand to plant a chivalrous kiss upon the back of it as he half-bowed to them. “If you wouldn’t mind showing us to her.”

“Oh no, my dears!” Shan, the curvy one, crooned with a giggle, gesturing elegantly over her shoulder behind her as she spoke. “Our Madame does not entertain just any guests, and she certainly isn’t waiting around in the parlor.”

“She only brings those she _especially_ likes to the fourth floor heaven, gentleman.” Elsie purred, glancing meaningfully upward at the ceiling. “But _trust_ me,” she added as she slipped over beside Bado and leaned against his front, giving the man no means of egress in the narrow entryway where his back was already practically against the wall, “We’ll take _such_ good care of you, won’t we, Shan?” her voice was a lusty exhalation, barely laced with the implication of a moan or a sigh in every phrase. Elsie’s hands were smoothing up the tall dwarf’s abdomen over his field gear, not quite full armor, but still providing coverage of every part of him but his face. Her slender fingers found their way under buckles and untied laces as she spoke so that by the time she finished, her right hand had managed to disappear between the undone portions of Bado’s clothing and presumably was now exploring his figure beneath them.

The dwarf, for his part, stood silently, mouth deliberately shut and drawing long, unsteady breaths through his nose. As Tristan amused himself with watching this development, he observed his friend’s eyes flutter half-closed involuntarily while Elsie watched his face carefully with wicked eyes and hands straying continually beneath his clothing. Before things could escalate further, he spoke again, his tone casual and not at all bemused.

“Actually, she _will_ see _me_. I’m an old friend. Go and tell her Tristan came to see Janeane, and he brought a present for her, too.” He insisted with certainty in his voice, not abrasive, but nevertheless very difficult to argue with. Shan blinked at him, lips parting in surprise, and Elsie paused her persistent exploration of the younger knight to glance between Shan and Tristan, uncomprehending.

“Elsie,” Shan said, regaining her composure in a heartbeat, “Please give the Madame his message. I will see to their refreshments.” Elsie looked as though she’d much rather _be_ a refreshment for the larger, younger man of the pair, but beyond a sulky little pout she offered no objection and silently obeyed Shan, mincing away down another narrow hallway and up an equally narrow flight of stairs out of sight.

“Please excuse her… _overzealous_ attentions, sir Knight.” Shan hummed in her velvety voice as she stepped close to Bado and reordered his clothing for him. He stared down at her, opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it again, and nodded acknowledgement of her words. When she had restored the decency of his attire from where Shan had partially disrobed him, Shan turned away from them and walked into the parlor, beckoning over her shoulder as she went. Tristan followed Bado’s line of sight to the heart-shaped contour of Shan’s backside as she sauntered away from them. He smirked, a corner of his mouth curling tightly with mischief and satisfaction as he watched his young friend’s throat move as he swallowed again.

They followed Shan into the parlor and sat down where she indicated on a couple of luxurious armchairs upholstered in velvet of hot, vivid colors in the family of reds and violets.

“So...” She sighed, taking a seat across from the two men and curling a finger or two in her brown tresses as she did so. Only the girth of her legs pressing against each other chastened her appearance in repose. Tristan knew immediately if she shifted her legs at all, he and his young protégé would get a free glimpse of something they were implicitly supposed to pay for before seeing. “You must be a ghost from the past if you know that name.”

“Something like that.” Tristan chuckled softly, plucking up a glass phallus from the low table between the chairs.  It was more of a sculptural piece than a toy, he knew, but the nevertheless risqué character of the object described the nature of the business plainly for any guest who entered the parlor. There were several of them on the table, each slightly different in its various proportions, and each a slightly different tint of colored glass. Shan’s eyes followed Tristan’s hands as he picked up the overtly sexual paperweight and then her gaze flicked to Bado, who had watched his Commander pick up the object, realized what it was, and looked away quickly, blushing again. Shan jerked her head slightly in the dwarf’s direction, her eyes on Tristan’s

“So what’s he, then, if you’re a ghost? He doesn’t talk, and he seems like he doesn’t know shit, either.” Bado did not react to being discussed as if he weren’t present. He kept his eyes on the carpet, his hands folded in his lap and his posture closed. Tristan laughed.

“Oh, he talks. He’s just a little out of his element, that’s all.” The big blonde knight elbowed his friend playfully, jostling Bado out of pretending to be interested in the pattern on the rug. “And I haven’t been by to visit since I married. So, you wouldn’t know me unless you’d been here about five years back.” Shan met his gaze with intelligent, catlike eyes, sharp and calculating as a predator’s eyes would be. She had dropped the seductress tones and no longer bothered to hide her appraising look as she tried to figure out her guests.

“Five years ago…” She said in a cool voice, “I was dying by degrees in the slums, far from here. I do not know you, sir knight. But, I’m curious to know your history with the Madame, and… Janeane.” She paused on the name, a suspicious amusement in her eyes. Tristan smiled his most disarming smile, his eyes equally cold and calculating.

“You are her Lieutenant.” He said smoothly. Shan blinked, her expression otherwise perfectly controlled and impassive. Her silence was already enough to confirm his suspicion, but the blink sealed his conviction on the matter. He nodded knowingly, still smiling. Then he gestured at Bado with a casual, graceful hand. “ _This_ is _my_ right hand.” He said with a carefully satisfied tone. Bado looked at him briefly, his gray-blue eyes curious, but also pleased in spite of himself. “I know the loyalty you feel for your mistress by his example.” The Knight Commander explained pleasantly. “I promise you have nothing to fear from either of us. Janeane is an old friend, and I want her to meet my new friend.” He inclined his head to the tall dwarf as he said this part. Shan’s eyes glittered as he said the name again and then settled on Bado for a long moment.

“He looks like a beast, but he seems tame enough for you. Even so, why should _I_ trust him to meet Madame Alexandria?” She asked.

“Because _I’m_ trusting you, and her, with _him_.” Tristan replied calmly, genuine warmth in his voice. “This man has saved my life. His value to me would be quite difficult to overestimate. If I am willing to leave him in her company out of my sight, that signifies a very high rapport. And besides,” He added, “I am perfectly happy to have you escort us to your mistress personally so that she may reassure you that we are trustworthy, herself.”

“That—“ Shan began, but stopped short and looked up over their heads as Elsie returned to the room, blushing pink and looking excited, her eyes bright.

“Madame Alexandria invites you to meet with her in the Heaven Suite, upstairs, gentlemen.” She said with an eloquent beckoning gesture. Shan rose and led the way, Tristan and then Bado behind her, with Elsie bringing up the rear. Tristan suspected this was in order that she might have a good view of a certain dwarf’s rear as they climbed the stairs, but there was little conceivable harm in her amorous machinations, so he only smirked to himself as the thought occurred to him.

The narrow wooden stairs led up and up, turning back on themselves at two landings before finally bringing them to the fourth floor, where a large pair of red doors ate up the entire profile of the hallway. Shan and Elsie took the handles of the doors, one for each of them and opened them, bowing low as the two large men stepped over the threshold into the Heaven Suite.


	11. Plaything

No one could have denied that the ‘heaven suite’ where Madame Alexandria took her very _special_ guests was entirely aptly named.

The room could very well have been pilfered from within a palace and stolen away to this building where its glamor and beauty outshined all the rest of the decorated interior of the place by miles and miles. Every piece of furniture was as elegant as a garden, its wooden limbs like graceful branches, and the floral and leaf-strewn patters of the glossy fabric upholstery like the canopy of a fairytale forest in autumn. Mirrors of all shapes and sizes populated the room in frames, on little tables, on the walls and even the ceiling in a radial design around an illuminated crystal chandelier. Light danced and rebounded across the room and through the mirrors until the glow of the space seemed equal to daylight, only this illumination was pure golden light haloing everything in the room, where the light of day shares the blue of the sky above.

In the center of the room a goddess reclined in regal decadence. Any lesser word could not have done Madame Alexandria even a shadow of justice. Hers was a beauty past the simple, unspoiled appeal of the young and fresh, subtle and tantalizing beyond mere sex appeal. Her golden eyes were twin drops of burning sunlight, fringed with amber; piercing, regal and unbending like a great cat. Her shining copper hair fell from her head in waterfalls of blazing color before becoming wavy as it spread out over her shoulders and chest, barely covered by a silken robe of palest gold, echoing her eyes. Tristan heard Bado draw a little inhalation of surprise as he noticed what the Knight Commander knew he would.

Reaching out from her red-brown hair like spikes of ivory were two very long, very elegant ears, pointed and delicate. Now, he knew, the mistress’s timelessly seductive aura would begin to make sense to the younger man. Elves were known to live more than two centuries, sometimes three. Tristan had never been so bold or callous as to ask her age, but Madame Alexandria was doubtless beyond the lifespan he could expect, at least.

By human standards, she didn’t look above thirty, but it was the sharp, penetrating character of her golden eyes that belied the patience and condescension that only someone of absolutely terrifying experience and wisdom could have. Now her blood-red lips curled into a smile and parted, wrapping around his name in the same old way that had always sent shivers up his spine.

“Tristan…” She breathed, shifting her legs and sitting more upright to gracefully offer her hand to him without fully rising. He took the offered hand with skin like bone china refracting firelight in his own woefully scarred and imperfect hand and brushed it with his lips.

“Hello, Janeane.” He said with slow warmth as he swam in some extremely pleasant memories that resurfaced in the wake of her voice and gaze, “It’s been entirely too long since I saw your exquisite face. I’m surprised I haven’t burned to ash in your radiance. Surely I no longer have the tolerance to withstand it.”

“Paying respects is expected, old friend,” She purred in a curiously accented voice. He never had known precisely where that accent had come from. “But _you_ always take it to such embarrassing extremes. Must you be so…” She paused, considering her words, “…corny?” She finished with the air of someone who has just remembered a silly piece of slang in a foreign language. He grinned.

“I was born a hopeless romantic, milady.” He chimed in a slightly musical voice. “I cannot help it any more than I can fly.” She laughed with a voice like music full of all the intricacies of flowing water, powerful as the ocean and delicate as a snowflake all at once.

“It is good to see you, Tristan. I had forgotten how it feels to laugh like this.” He bowed low in comical exaggeration of graciousness. Suddenly he was certain that somewhere behind them, Shan was making a disapproving face.

Janeane rose up off the divan with the grace of ink dispersing into water and looped her arm around his, leading him into a second room through a door.

“Come, my friend. I would like to catch up with you some more.” She hummed, calling over her shoulder, “Shan, Elsie, my pets: Please show this dwarf man our best hospitality.” This order was accompanied by a careless, elegant gesture, a twist of her regal hand in the air, but Tristan amended it.

“Don’t let them into your drawers, Dramhau!” he called. Bado stared after his friend with a bewildered expression like a faithful pet asked to wait while his master went on an errand. Elsie was on him in a heartbeat, caressing his jawline with one hand while the other went to redo the work she’d done earlier making him accessible to her touch through his clothing. He hardly seemed to notice her until Tristan was almost out of sight.

Janeane led him into a room like a bedchamber, except that it didn’t look like anyone regularly slept in it. There were no particularly personal belongings, and everything was as perfectly staged as the previous room. She released him, turned and looked him up and down with appraising interest, even going as far as to reach out and grab hold of his jaw, turning his face this way and that to inspect him from all angles.

“You have aged well, my dear. So refined looking now, but I must say; it is _always_ shocking to me to see how much your kind change in so few years!” He smiled at her.

“Thank you milady, your interest itself is a compliment of the highest order.”

“You needn’t be so formal. Our subordinates are not in here with us. Shan and Elsie will take good care of your virgin buck out there.” Her smirk dripped with wickedness. He raised his eyebrows slightly, impressed.

“Well,” He admitted, “You are as perceptive as ever.”

“Thank you dear, but flattery aside…” She brushed the backs of her fingertips across his cheek and down his neck. “I was told you promised a gift, and now that you don’t need to look after your friend, I was hoping you’d _give_ it to me.”

“Actually, milady, my gift _is_ him.” Tristan said matter-of-factly, gently prying her hand from his skin and holding it between them. Always in his mind he saw Lily’s beautiful face, dearer and lovelier than gods and goddesses could possibly contrive to be, at least to him. The mother of his child could not be outshone, even by such radiant figures as Madame Alexandria, who laughed lightly at what she assumed was a joke. He shook his head and gently assured her: “It’s no joke, Janeane. I brought him here to make him a plaything of yours.” Her expression turned slightly impatient.

“Just _what_ do you think I would want with a virgin dwarf, Tristan?” She asked incredulously, her voice never losing the breathy, sexual decadence it had always had.

“He is a good friend of mine, and kind of a little project, too.” Tristan admitted, “He’s had a rough time in the Knighthood and I was hoping to do him a kindness by introducing him to you and offering him up to your whims.

“Virgin sacrifices are for dragons, Sir Knight.” She said sarcastically. “Dwarvish men are easy, you know. They’re all so dazed to think a woman would have them at all. If I were only to stoke his ears I would show you a man undone, and probably make him come in his underdressings before he knew what had happened.” He laughed, shaking his head at the odd juxtaposition of her regal elegance and her crass familiarity with such lewd topics. “If you want to get him off so badly, Tristan,” She added, hands on her hips now in an attitude of casual dismissal, “Why don’t you just do it yourself?”

“He doesn’t do guys, and neither do I.” Tristan explained patiently, “Just because I married a woman doesn’t mean men now represent loopholes to my vows, you know.”

“Yes, yes.” She waved a hand impatiently in front of her. “Marriage and faithfulness… You are all so attached to this idea of one woman! One woman for me, only one! My ‘true love’ for all my life!” She went on, mocking a love-struck rant while fluttering her eyelashes in an exaggerated fashion. “When will your kind let go of this attachment, hm? It only makes change more painful for you when it happens, you know.” She sounded sympathetic, despite the very uncharitable view she had on monogamy. “Besides all of that, though: Why would it need to be me? I already told you, my girls will—“

“My life choices aside…” Tristan said in that same patient tone, “He needs to experience some good among all this misery. I want for my friend to know there is still beauty and pleasure and _fun_ in this world. Do you not think he deserves that?” He pressed. “Besides,” He continued, “No one is better for this than you, Janeane.”

“Am I to acquiesce to this request merely because you want the _best_ for your friend’s first time?” She raised an eyebrow skeptically.

 _I_ am not on the table, but he is as big as a lion and twice as strong. I still know what you like, Janeane. You could make him into whatever you want! He is innocent of any habit concerning sex because he has never had sex. Don’t you see the great advantage here? I want to put him in your hands for your sake as much as for his. He’s a good man and I think you’d actually like him if you talk to him a bit. Plus, you can’t have gotten a good look at him if you aren’t even a _little_ intrigued.”

Janeane continued to stare at him, unconvinced. He smiled at her again, then turned and reopened the door, calling as he did: “Dramhau! Please come in here and join us.”

Bado was standing in the other room still, almost like a statue, despite Elsie’s slender form leaning against his and her hands doing their best to find his flesh through the layered field gear he was wearing. He was too tall for either of the women in the room with him to reach his mouth with theirs, so Tristan suppressed a laugh as he mused that the tall dwarf had preserved himself merely by remaining standing. At the call of his Commander and friend, Bado gingerly extricated himself from Elsie’s attentions and walked past Shan, who was sitting on one of the couches watching him with distant, reluctant interest.

Tristan noted his friend’s posture as he entered the room. It wasn’t that Bado had ever been the sort to exude defiance, but the Knight Commander had never seen his young dwarf friend as submissive looking as he was now. He moved carefully, his eyes down, rounding his shoulders and ducking his head, trying to make himself smaller despite how impossible such a feat would be. Janeane watched him too as the tall dwarf sat down at her behest on one of the elegant pieces of furniture gingerly. Nothing was really made for a person of his size, and the grandeur of the furniture probably made him nervous of damaging it.

“Janeane, this is my friend and subordinate, Bado Dramhau.” Tristan said warmly, gesturing at Bado. Janeane stood before him and extended one of her graceful, alabaster hands for his benefit. The pale gold silken robe was all but wholly open, its owner not bothering to guard her figure from his sight. The younger man pulled off his right glove with his left hand and gently accepted her hand, mimicking Tristan’s earlier actions as he brushed the back of her hand with his lips, glancing up at her as he did so.

Something about Janeane stilled as her golden eyes locked with Bado’s stormy-ocean colored ones. Her brow furrowed ever so slightly, and the tame beast, as she had called him, gazed up at her face with perfect calm, now. A curious smirk teased the corner of Tristan’s mouth as he watched.

Unlike Tristan, Bado did not employ a corny romantic line as he greeted the exquisite woman before him. His voice was a deep, voiced murmur as he gave her only two words;

“A pleasure…”

Janeane’s eyebrows rose further and she looked slightly imperious.

“You have no idea, dwarf child.” She replied in a similarly quiet voice. Bado actually smirked at this.

“I daresay that is true.” He replied, his voice calm overall but laced with the same nervous energy he’d been fighting to keep under wraps since they arrived.

“Well-mannered.” She hummed, glancing sidelong at Tristan. “Let us get a better look at you, my dear.” She ushered him to stand by slowly pulling her hand back, holding his larger, angular one as she did. Bado stared at her all the while, no longer keeping his eyes downcast. He released her hand as Janeane began to walk a slow circle around the tall man, eyeing him up and down with interest as she did so. His clothing was already undone in several places thanks to Elsie, so Janeane had very little work to do in finishing the job. She reached up from behind him and pulled his jacket down over his shoulders and off of him in one confident motion, tossing it onto the chair he’d been sitting in before and continuing her slow circumambulation around him.

She took up his left hand and pulled the remaining glove off slowly, turning the angular, masculine hand, more than double the size of her own, over and stroking it with her thumb. Her catlike manner grew more approving as she circled him again, unbuttoning the last remaining button on his shirt and butterflying it open. He merely continued to watch her silently as she disrobed and examined him with interest, not the ravenous impatience of Elsie or the cold calculation of Shan, but her own patient, intrigued rhythm. By now the younger knight was standing before her with his trousers intact but only the tight black undershirt he wore beneath his clothing and armor remaining. She ran a hand over his chest and down his abdomen, following it with her eyes before they flicked back up to his face. Bado’s mouth tightened slightly, still shut tightly on any sound he might have made.

“There is something to work with here, yes…” Janeane purred. “Take it off…” She added, plucking at the edge of the tight black shirt. Bado swallowed, glanced at Tristan, who was smirking in amusement as he watched the exchange, and then obeyed, shifting his weight and watching her reaction as he stood half-naked before the beautiful elf. Aside from the sculpted musculature the dwarf had earned fighting and forging for the Noradian Knighthood, he had also apparently acquired a good deal more hair since he’d first appeared among the human soldiers. A long, dense trail of thick, dark hair bridged the distance between his beltline and his chest, which sported the beginnings of a rather impressive carpet of hair as well.

Janeane actually smiled as she unabashedly reached out and laid her hand on his chest, running her fingers down the center line of him through that dark hair with evident satisfaction in her face and her movements. Bado’s mouth tightened again and he tilted his head up slightly, his eyes closed as he attempted to survive the touch without letting a sound of pleasure cross his lips. Evidently he was not sure how he was supposed to be reacting, but he was doing his best to remain composed.

The grin on Janeane’s face widened as she watched the young man control himself, knowing he’d never contended with something like this before. Apparently in that moment she decided to measure one last criteria before she made her decision, for without preface of any kind, the elven goddess traced her fingers right past the tall young man’s belt and dragged them over his groin with torturous delicacy. He tensed visibly throughout his body and waited, eyes shut and hands trembling at his sides. Through the fabric of his trousers, the dwarven knight’s arousal was perfectly readable. It seemed the character of his manhood was consistent with the rest of him; above average in size and substantiality. Janeane combed over it with her eyes and looked at Tristan, smirking malevolently.

“Bravo, Tristan. It seems you do remember what I like, not that it would have been easy to forget. But this one is even finer than yourself, as raw materials go.” Tristan inclined his head graciously. Janeane continued, “I accept your offer.” Then she looked very directly at the tall young man’s face, approval in her face. “Bado… was it?” Bado shivered as she spoke his name and his ears twitched. The wicked grin returned to her face. “How would you like to be my new pet?” She purred, and cupped his groin with one of her graceful hands. He squirmed very slightly and his ears reddened further, his mouth still sealed tightly shut over whatever unfiltered sounds he couldn’t otherwise help but make, just now. He looked at Tristan again and the older Knight grinned and nodded very slightly.

“I think I would… very much, milady.” He said in a ragged whisper, looking back into Janeane’s eyes as he spoke.

“Good.” She replied in a liquid voice, leaning against him and running her fingers over his chest again in a gesture that could only have been interpreted as gloating over her new prize.

Feeling very proud of his successful machinations, Tristan reached into a pocket and pulled out a sachet of gold and jewels and tossed it onto the low table in front of the divan so that a few of its contents spilled onto the surface. Bado turned at the sound and seeing the small pile of treasure looked stricken at his Commander’s face. Tristan raised a hand in a gesture of reassurance.

“A donation to your business, Madame.” He said smoothly. Bado looked aggrieved at him and back at Janeane.

“I…” He began in a choked, hesitant voice, “I don’t wish to impose myself upon you for money, milady.” At this, Janeane actually threw back her head and laughed richly.

“Oh, but you _are_ such a gentleman, young buck.” She chimed. “I am sorry to have alarmed you my dear, but let me reassure you: Tristan could never have afforded me even if he’d given me every penny the king ever paid him.” Her face was a wicked, self-satisfied mask of confidence. Bado gulped and glanced at Tristan again.

“It’s true.” The older knight confirmed. “I was being quite literal when I called it a gift. Madame Alexandria only ever had me at her whim. And, she’d only have you if it pleased her, too.” To which the elven lady nodded graciously.

“I believe I like you, dwarf pup.” She hummed, “And, I’m going to show you pleasure you haven’t even dreamed of. _And_ ,” She added firmly, turning his face to her with one of her hands at his jawline. “I’m going to make you _mine,_ just exactly as I like. You will want nothing more than to give me whatever I ask of you however I like it, once I have had you to myself a little while.” Bado’s pointed ears twitched again.

Tristan chuckled and moved past the pair toward the door.

“You’re on furlough tomorrow, Dramhau, so take your time with him, milady.” He flashed them a grin as he opened the door.

“Very good.” She chimed, tugging Bado’s belt open as she spoke. The younger man looked anxiously at his friend.

“Tristan… you’ll be alright?” He said uncertainly. The Knight Commander laughed aloud.

“Son, I survived quite a few years on my own, and though I prize you highly as a second, I think I’ll be able to handle a day without you.” Tristan let the door swing closed behind him on the image of Janeane drawing the tall dwarf’s attention back to herself. He bid Shan and Elsie a very sophisticated farewell, kissing both their hands and bowing to them before he headed down the stairs and out of the elaborately decorated building and smiling to himself all the while. In truth he hadn’t been totally confident his plan would work. Janeane never did anything that did not please her, so he couldn’t have been sure she’d take the dwarf. But, knowing how she approved large, masculine men who would be tame as kittens to her whims, he’d felt it a pretty safe bet, just the same.

Now his young friend had the very best distraction a man could possibly ask for. He could hardly dwell on dismal subjects or punish himself with misery while _she_ had him in her hands. The Knight Commander walked back to the war camp, a mile and a half down a long, dirt road with a spring in his step, humming the tune of a rather irreverent song some sailors had once taught him. He could not recall when he last felt so satisfied with himself.


	12. A Giant for a Giant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the inconsistency in posting schedule. It's been a good few weeks since I've updated this one. I may have started a few too many projects and now can't keep up momentum on all of them at once. XD But, I assure you I haven't forgotten about this story and will continue writing it until it is finished. My guess is it will be less than 30 chapters by the end, probably between 20 and 25. I hope you'll continue to enjoy reading it as I continue to write it!

“Where’s your shadow?” Lieutenant Brusc jeered playfully as Tristan approached him in the stables. Tristan grinned wolfishly by way of reply and shrugged.

“Probably in one piece. Don’t think a guy his size could be wrung out by a woman in only one night.” Then he paused and looked thoughtful. “Then again…” he trailed off. He _had_ left his friend in the hands of the most sexually experienced and ravenous woman he’d ever met. Who knew if he’d come back walking straight or limping?

Brusc laughed out loud and clapped him on the shoulder companionably.

“Atta’ boy, Starson. I knew I could count on ya to take care o’ the lad.” He chuckled, forgetting decorum completely as he spoke to his superior. Tristan didn’t mind in the least. He only smiled back, still proud of himself and his machinations which had landed Bado in bed with Madame Alexandria, a woman who’d make an ideal ladies’ man out of him in short order, at least in terms of knowing his way around the bedroom. Tristan himself had the elvish goddess to thank for his own expertise at pleasing Lily when he had the rare opportunity to return home to her.

“Yeah yeah.” He waved the lieutenant off despite his own smug smirk still prominently displayed across his mouth. “So what’d you call me out here for, anyway?”

Brusc beamed at Tristan proudly and his chest puffed up. Then he leaned in and spoke more quietly.

“I got somethin’ to show ya, Commander. Somethin’ not unlike our overgrown dwarf, ya know.” He said in a delighted, confidential tone. Curiosity piqued, Tristan leaned toward the other man, expecting to hear a further explanation. Brusc only chuckled again, swatting Tristan’s arm excitedly and beckoning him to follow. The lieutenant led him into the stables and down the long row of penned warhorses. He held a hand out to pat Vashon’s muzzle as he passed her by, but the shorter man led the Commander on and on, all the way toward the end of the long, makeshift structure. Tristan could not quite figure why the man would want to go so far out of his way to show Tristan a horse, given his well-known attachment to his own steed, and his puzzlement only increased when they passed the last occupied stalls and went right on going.

“Where’s this goose chase end, Brusc?” Tristan growled. The jovial man waved off his concern, grinning over his shoulder.

“Patience, Commander, we’re almost there.”

They exited the other end of the long stable building and turned a tight left corner, where an odd assortment of extra lumber and canvas had been combined to create an absurdly large stall. It confused the eye as if to expose to the viewer a sudden shift in proportions, momentarily making the Knight Commander wonder dimly if he had shrunk or stumbled into another reality.

“Here we are, sir.” He said with evident satisfaction in his voice as he opened the door, almost as tall as himself, and ushered Tristan within. Suspiciously, the Knight Commander stepped into the stall onto the straw and immediately his jaw dropped open.

Before him stood a mountain of a horse, too tall to conveniently ride or mount, too large to be fathomable even by men who’d ridden horses all their lives. The near-black brown of the beast’s coat contrasted starkly with the wide white stripe that marked his face, all the way down his muzzle, matching the huge shaggy feet and hooves at the end of his thick, muscular legs. The great beast blinked huge, glossy black eyes at him and shook its considerable neck, tossing the long black tresses of its mane as it did so and snorted a huge exhalation of breath.

“Gods and dragons..” Tristan breathed, unblinking as he stared at the creature, one eyeful in the space of the stall falling short of revealing the whole animal.

“Ain’t he somethin’?” Brusc sighed as Tristan stared in awe. Then he snapped out of his stupor and turned to the mustached man.

“This thing is too damned big.” The Knight Commander stated incredulously. Brusc’s booming laugh filled up the space immediately. The horse tossed his head and blew a chuffing sound through his nostrils at the sudden outburst, but betrayed no sign that he would take flight or lash out.

“See, now that’s just exactly what we been saying about our dwarf since the moment he first arrived.” Brusc said excitedly, poking a finger at Tristan’s chest to emphasize his point. “He’s too big for all the armor we got! We ain’t got a sword long enough for him. He can’t lay on any of the cots we got and he _barely_ fits in our tents, havin’ to duck all the time fit to give a guy a neck-ache, ya know?” Brusc beamed triumphantly as he saw the change in Tristan’s expression as the Knight Commander understood his intentions.

“How’d you find him?” Tristan asked, voice hushed in his astonishment as he looked back at the huge animal.

“I got a friend, see, he works in the stable yards where central command breeds warhorses. Mostly they’re a selfish lot and only aim ta’ make more purdy horses for them to prance around on in parades and inspections. Well some of the more high rankin’ sort have some kinda competition on, as I hear it, tryin’ to get themselves each the bigger warhorse.” He shook his head with a disgusted expression. “Damned wasteful trying to keep the best stock for themselves when they never see one eyeful of real combat!” Tristan’s mouth tightened and his expression darkened as he nodded in agreement. “Well anyway:”, Brusc Continued, “They finally went and made one too big even for them! The way I hear it, this feller came out a damned sight bigger than his pa, though they only knew he’d be a giant once he was a year old. ‘Parently didn’t start out much bigger than any other foal but he just didn’ stop growin’ til’ he was five! My friend told me one of those pompous generals actually tried to ride the thing and broke his leg falling off the giant when he tried to dismount!” The Lieutenant enjoyed a prolonged laugh as he mentioned this information.

“How’s his temperament?” Tristan ventured, tentatively holding a hand out to touch the great beast’s neck.

“Oh he’s as gentle as they come, sir.” Brusc said, nodding firmly, “But he’s one strong son of a bitch. If he don’t wanna, he ain’t movin’. Took em’ quite the trial to even get him here, or so they tell me.”

“So, you think he’ll make a fair cavalry beast?” Tristan continued, stroking the dark, glossy coat of the animal as its large shining eyes watched him with placid interest. “Assuming you mean to put _our_ giant on his back?”

“Oh, yes. He’s got spirit. He don’t appear to be the most aggressive creature, sure, but he’s the biggest damn thing to walk the earth in a good long while and he knows it. He doesn’t _need_ to get feisty, but you can tell he’s got it in ‘im.” Brusc nodded, still beaming. “Not unlike someone else we know. They’re made for each other, sir!”

Tristan looked dubiously at the horse again.

“Oh they definitely match, that much is certain.” He allowed, then grinned, “But you have to admit it’s scary even to us to be puttin’ _that_ man on _this_ horse. Our own troops might start shakin’ in their boots next to _that._ ”

“Oh, aye, but think what the _enemy_ ’ _ll_ be doin’, sir!” Brusc challenged, a wicked light in his eyes. Now Tristan laughed at the fiendish glee in his subordinate’s face.

“Well then, our dwarf will get an unexpected surprise when he gets back, won’t he?” He replied jovially. As if in agreement, the huge horse curved his head around, nudged the Knight Commander in a friendly manner and plucked at Tristan’s cape with his lips.

“What is he called?” Tristan asked finally after catching up the huge, broad head and stroking it a few times.

“Dune.” Brusc answered proudly, the sound itself almost describing the impact of seeing the enormous creature.


	13. Long Awaited Laughter

Through a sizable conspiracy involving nearly all the messenger boys and aides-de-camp in his army, Tristan managed to pounce on his protégé almost as soon as the tall man returned the afternoon after the Knight Commander had left him in the hands of ‘Madame Alexandria’. He ducked into the reddish blacksmith tent and folded his arms as he grinned malevolently at the dwarven knight, who turned to see who had entered, then shook his head and sat down gingerly on his cot with an abashed smile. His movements were slow and a little stiff. He was moving carefully, though by his flushed face and the smirk that couldn’t help but tug the corners of his mouth, Tristan knew well that what ailed him was a good kind of hurt. His own grin widened.

“Well?” He demanded, “How was it?” Bado shook his head and blinked tiredly at his superior.

“I…” He began, then blinked, looking somewhat bemused, “I haven’t got any words for it.” He said, chuckling, “But, I hear _you_ already know, so you hardly need me to describe it to you.”

“True enough.” Tristan replied gruffly, “But what I’m really asking is: How’re you doing, after your furlough? I’m guessing you know me well enough by now to know I brought you there for a reason.” Bado looked down at his feet, sighed softly and smiled.

“Yeah… I know.” He said quietly in his basso voice. He paused a long moment, chewing his lip as he thought of what to say next. Finally, he raised his blue-gray eyes to Tristan’s and spoke: “I ain’t gonna say I’m good as new… some things can’t be undone, after all, and not even a night with Janeane can erase that fact…” He blushed as he referred to her, his eyes flicking sideways as he was drawn into a surely fevered memory for a moment, “But I’m okay. I’m sorry for being in such a funk these past weeks. I feel more balanced, now, though. There are certainly plenty of rotten things in this world, and it’s hard to keep my head when I feel like I’m becoming one… but I think I understand what you are trying to show me. There’s some wonderful things in life, too. I think it’ll be harder for me to fall into despair now. I’m grateful, Tristan… truly.” He finished with a slight lift in his brow, imploring the commander to believe his improved condition. This he did, sighing out the tension in his back and shoulders and staring affectionately at the young man he’d come to call his friend. He unfolded his arms and smiled.

“That is very good to hear, Bado. You’re welcome.” Then, finding his gruff masculine self-image chafing in all the sentimentality, the Knight Commander cleared his throat, grinned wolfishly at the dwarf, and threw solemnity out the window.

“She’s damned fine, though ain’t she?” At this, the younger man laughed aloud and the sound of it melted away Tristan’s anxieties. That laugh could not exist alongside despair. No indeed; that gloom that had enveloped his friend was held at bay for now. The Knight Commander’s own spirits rose like a kite on an updraft and he basked in the welcome resurrection of his friend’s good humor.

“You can say that again.” Bado chimed, his face turning pink again. “And she didn’t lie, either. I couldn’t have imagined anything that felt half as good as her… well… ya know… her _attentions_.” He finished, a giddy, embarrassed laugh following his allusions to the myriad of sexual favors he and the elf Madame had surely exchanged recently. Tristan laughed too. “And, she wants me to come back…” The dwarf added, looking off to the side with an expression half-embarrassed, and half self-satisfied. “She says I’ll make a good plaything and she expects me to return to her at every opportunity.”

Tristan laughed again, musing to himself he couldn’t wait to deliver an ‘I told you so’ to his old flame the next time he saw her.

“I knew she’d like you.” He said confidently, very pleased with himself, then snapped his fingers as he remembered the other reason he’d waited none-too patiently for the dwarven knight’s return. “Oh, but what are we standin’ here for!? I got somethin’ you need to see. _Now._ ” He added, extending a hand to pull the younger man to his feet. He wasn’t about to let the younger knight off the hook just because he was walking gingerly following his all-night crash course in bedroom acrobatics.

“Gods, Tristan, give a guy a minute to breathe!” He protested playfully, “What’s so important, anyway?”

“You’ll see!” The blonde knight said brightly, beckoning to the taller man energetically and disappearing out of the tent’s interior. He paced along the familiar route with long strides, too excited to moderate his pace. And anyway, Bado’s long legs would give him no trouble in keeping up. He followed the same path Brusc had led him down that morning, earning a familiar curious grunt from his tall shadow as they passed through the stables without pausing before any of the warhorses. Finally, they exited through the back and came upon the oversized stall that housed the enormous draft horse. Pausing outside of it, Bado looked up and down the makeshift building and raised an eyebrow at Tristan.

“You’re not gonna tell me I should live in _this_ , rather than the undersized tents, are you?” He jibed. Tristan barked a quick laugh, and shook his head.

“Nah, that’s not what I brought you here for, but you might want to after all once you see what’s inside.” That earned him a baffled furrowing of his friend’s brow, but he unlatched the door and stepped inside, calling “Come on, come on.”

Tristan stood aside, grinning as he waited to enjoy the dwarven knight’s first reaction once he beheld the great horse ‘Dune’ for the first time. The younger man did not disappoint. As Bado ducked into the oversized stall he flinched visibly and his eyes snapped wide open.

“Gods and dragons!” He gasped, then flashed an incredulous glance at Tristan before snapping his gaze back on the huge equine. “Where on Earth did _this_ monster come from?!”

The Knight Commander grinned broadly, savoring the moment for a few seconds before answering.

“Brusc tracked him down and brought him here from central command. Name’s ‘Dune.’ Whaddaya think of him?” Bado blinked and turned back to the horse again, looking over the massive frame, the glossy dark hide, and the brilliant white markings of the face and hooves. He stepped forward slowly, as if mesmerized and raised a hand. Dune watched him steadily, ears forward with interest, tossing his tail once or twice as he took in this, the largest creature on two legs _he_ had ever encountered, surely. The big square-ish hand of the tall dwarf stilled in midair before touching the great beast and after a long pause of mutual appraisal, Dune leaned his head into Bado’s touch and blew a horsey chuff of approval. Bado let out his own breath at once and smiled fond and impressed at once.

“He’s magnificent.” He murmured. Tristan’s chest swelled with joyful anticipation and he drew a breath to speak again.

“He’s yours.”

“Wha—?” The dwarf spun his head around and stared incredulously at Tristan. “You must be joking, sir. I’ve only been with the knighthood for two years! I’ve got no rank! It’s only your favor that affords me such deference from the others. You _can’t_ award me a warhorse ahead of your officers, at least…” Tristan shook his head and chuckled.

“Your deeds earn you just as much rapport as does my favor, kid. And, it hardly matters anyway. This fella is too big for anyone but you to ride him. He’s yours.” He repeated. Bado blinked at him several times in disbelief, but offered no further argument. What argument could there be anymore?

“Sir, I…” he stammered in a choked voice, swallowed, then marshalled his will to answer more audibly. “Thank you, Tristan. I will take the very best care of him.”

Tristan smiled approvingly.

“I know you will, son. You should thank Brusc, too. This was all his idea.”

“I will, sir.” By now the dwarf was beaming. After all their history together, Tristan knew well what this would mean to him.

“Oh, but I hope you know this doesn’t mean you’re excused from looking after Vashon for me.” He added, winking. Bado laughed.

“Yes sir!” He boomed joyfully. Behind him, Dune whinnied joyfully and curled his neck, catching Bado’s shoulder under his chin and tugging the man off balance so he had to step back as he collided with the big beast’s shoulder. He laughed happily and turned to administer the affection his new companion demanded, the giant horse chuffing contentedly as the dwarf’s big hands stroked and scratched him.

Tristan smiled on them both, enjoying a rare moment of jubilation in a time of blood and iron and war. _This_ would make a perfect letter for Lily.


	14. Climbing a Ladder to the Moon

For the first time in the twenty six months since Bado first appeared amidst the Noradian knighthood, the overlarge man had become elusive.

Ordinarily one could follow the unmistakable sound of his heavy hammerfalls to the worn red tent he operated out of in the center of camp, seek the smoke and iron smell of the forge, or merely look about for the head above the crowd with the pointed ears. There was no one like him and no one to mistake for him, so the sudden habitual absence of the dwarven knight sewed a slight unease amongst the army.

To be sure, this was partly owed to the abrupt lack of on-call free or at least low-cost smithing the soldiers had enjoyed any time of day up to now, but there was also a vague sense that the knights missed the familiar sight of him around. Even if no one but Tristan and perhaps Brusc had developed any kind of intimate rapport with the tall dwarf, by now he’d earned the respect of most of the knighthood on the ground and exchanged with them quite civilly in his daily routine.

Without an officer’s title or responsibilities and given that his smithing services had begun as a voluntary exercise, Bado could not easily be ordered to remain at everyone else’s convenience, now that there was a different locale he’d rather frequent than his own blacksmith’s tent. Even so, some began to resent his absences with a huffy sense of entitlement to the forging and crafting favors he’d doled out so liberally to date.

If Bado had energy to spare noticing this attitude, however, he did not show it. Day by day he transitioned through a regular cycle of rather distinct moods that followed exactly the schedule of furlough time for the soldiers like himself. Always it progressed the same way: first mild, then fidgety, then broody, then anxious leading up to the actual release of the men to go about their personal business or play, at which point he would vanish immediately and stay gone until the very morning he was due back in camp, a broad, self-satisfied smile wrapped across his mouth. For a few days following a furlough he brimmed with vim and vigor and seemed positively delighted to grant even the most trivial favors his fellow soldiers asked of the blacksmith.

Some of the cleverer knights began to notice this pattern and planned to solicit his help especially on days like this. After several weeks of this, the knights adapted to such a degree that no one looked for the big man with the pointed ears during a furlough, eventually adjusting their expectations so completely that they seemed to forget entirely that this was a change from how he’d been before.

Through it all, Bado was outwardly oblivious, though Tristan knew better than to assume anything had escaped his young friend’s notice. The Knight Commander always had a wolfish smile or a knowing smirk for his right-hand man when he returned, practically preening with an innately masculine sense of pride and confidence. In a remarkably short space of time, the young knight appeared to have built a foundation of self-assurance on the grounds that he could satisfy the sexual appetites of the exquisite Madame Alexandria and that she insisted on monopolizing all his available free time away from the camp.

Off all people, Tristan understood this sentiment perfectly. But even so, he had grown so used to the young knight being readily available at his beck and call, a small part of him twitched with impatience during such times. He even grew a very little bit jealous from time to time, not of Janeane’s erotic possessiveness of his friend or Bado’s surely decadent experiences at her mercy, but rather because his friends’ enjoyment of one another’s company reminded him always of how very far away he was from Lily.

He could not say how many times that familiar sigh of weary longing escaped his nose or mouth as the thought occurred to him that he hadn’t seen her in a number of months that was steadily incrementing to depressing heights.

Weeks turned to months in this fashion, with Norad’s Dwarven knight’s attention divided between duty and pleasure depending on the day. When he wasn’t off with the elvish goddess for whom he’d voluntarily taken on the role of plaything, he maintained a very professional level of focus and performed his duties as consistently as ever, even with the added burden of caring for the biggest horse in the army. As predicted, the giant man mounted upon the giant horse struck quite a chord both with enemy units and the knighthood’s own ranks. The unusual sight became something of a rallying flag for the infantry and something of an omen of destruction for the enemy. By the way the enemy lines broke and melted away like water before any charge the dwarven knight participated in, one might even be tempted to think him some kind of apocalyptic figure, dressed in cruel black armor and wielding two greatswords from the back of the equine monster, Dune.

Thanks in no small part to this influence, the Noradian forces maintained dominance in every battle with the empire. But, as many times as they broke and retreated, the blasted enemy reformed and came at them again and again, burning and sacking villages and homesteads in between brief, one-sided struggles with the knights. Even so, the gains in morale from Bado’s presence and visage as the ferocious monster Tristan had taught him to show himself as were beyond rubies in value to the commander.

Even if the man hadn’t been a terrifyingly deadly and magnificent fighter, the knight commander presumed he still would have become something of a mascot for the army by virtue of the sheer oddity of his appearance, especially in combination with Dune.

This fact seemed some combination of novel and trivial to Tristan until one particular dispatch from the pompous, overfed lords in charge of the military abruptly assigned a new label to the dwarven knight.

              “Your presence is requested at the parade march scheduled to be performed before his excellency the King on the third Sunday of November.

              P.S. Be sure to bring along that young dwarf lad with his overlarge horse with you. His majesty is eager to see the living ‘legend’ in person.”

The knight commander furrowed his blond brows and tilted his head back to bark at his subordinate from where he sat reclining on his camp chair, boots resting on a barrel of ale one of the generals had sent him as a very satisfied congratulations gift for their recent string of victories over the enemy.

“Hey, Dramhau!” He called. The younger man looked up from an outsized saddle he was cleaning and oiling, one of two he kept in rotation for use on Dune, for which no standard-issue saddle would suffice. “Since when are you a ‘legend’, huh?” Bado grinned a lopsided smile full of cockiness and mischief.

“And she assured me she doesn’t kiss and tell. Tsk, tsk.” He shook his head with a phony show of disappointment. “Well, if my reputation is going to precede me like this, you’ll have to send word ahead to the villages we pass through for them to keep their women inside, or I might get pulled apart in the resulting frenzy.” He added, full of apparent concern for his safety. Tristan rolled his eyes in an exaggerated fashion and made a good-humored snort of disgust.

“Better check your ‘legendary’ hubris at the garrison before we find the enemy next, or they’re going to have a plenty big target to aim for when they spy your inflated head.” The Knight commander chided, eyes still roaming over correspondences from other portions of his majesty’s army.

“Does it count as hubris if I’ve earned it?” The dwarf wondered aloud in a curious voice.

“Especially then.” Tristan answered without looking up again. Then his expression grew serious for a beat.

“I don’t like it though…” He mumbled. “They’re only troubled while they’re retreating… they should be trying to run home with their tails between their legs, not taking their sweet time raiding homesteads along the way…”

“Even a broken army needs provisions, I suppose.” The dwarf muttered in response to Tristan’s musings.

“Hm.” The older knight answered. Silence, but for the rustle of papers and the creak of fine, firm leather, surrounded the two men for a time, both apparently deep in concentrated thought. After an indeterminate time, Bado’s deep voice intruded on Tristan’s thoughts again.

“She sure is something, though…” He murmured happily, “Wonder if she’d… I mean, everyone wants someone to… right?” the slightly disjointed mumblings suddenly snapped Tristan’s attention out of his fixated thoughts and he frowned as he called back to his friend.

“What are you on about?” He growled, “She’s a madame. She hasn’t got time for domestic aspirations, you know. Never been the least bit interested in such things.”

“I know, but… sometimes what she says… I get to thinkin’…” Tristan’s frown darkened and a pang of premonition flashed through his mind and soured his tone.

“Well don’t.” He snipped. “It is what it is. Don’t try and make it into something else. You’ll only fall and break your neck, trying to climb a ladder to the moon.” Bado laughed aloud and shook his head.

“You say the oddest things at times, sir. Like some old maid with those nursery rhyme images.” He shook his own head of untidy dark hair and chuckled again, apparently unfazed by the warning in the odd choice of words. Tristan felt himself make a low pensive sound like a growl in his throat. Silently he filed that particular concern away on an imaginary shelf. The summons in his hands was real; more than just a sneaking suspicion, so it must come first.

“Looks like we’re wanted for some kind of dog and pony show, kid.” He grumbled, folding the letter and dropping it back down on his small, semi-portable desk.

“Hm?” Bado hummed absently, still staring through the saddle in his grasp in a distant, dreamy fashion as his hands automatically worked it over with a wax-based leather dressing. The knight commander scowled at the younger man, lost in daydreams and decadent memories, and a flash of anxiety swept through him. It crept out of him in his next words as a sharp tone he hadn’t quite intended to weave into his voice.

“Wake the hell up, son! I need your pointy-eared head screwed on straight!”

Bado looked up at Tristan with momentarily surprised eyes, saying nothing for a breath or two.

“Sorry, sir.” He murmured quietly. Tristan blanched.

“Sorry kid.” He muttered quickly, coughing and turning away. “I just hate this politicking bullshit and I especially hate the way those old walruses talk about you like you’re a horse or something.” Bado made an amused little grunt, apparently mollified by the commander’s hasty apology.

“Bein’ a horse wouldn’t be too bad.” He said offhandedly, “Get fed pretty well. More valuable and less numerous by far than rookie knights.” He shrugged. Tristan scowled and gently punched the younger man’s big shoulder with his fist, a token gesture, gruff and affectionate all at once.

“There’s even fewer Dwarf boys runnin’ around here, kid. Besides, I keep you in better provisions than most, don’t I?”

“Giving me treats out of Lily’s care packages?” He inquired, eyebrows raised, “Don’t you think the credit goes to her, in that case?” Tristan frowned again.

“Well, what about the fare at Janeane’s palace, hm? I doubt she lets her favorite stud go hungry.” Bado huffed a little laugh at this.

“Hardly. But she wants so much outta me, she hasn’t got much choice but to feed me or I’d croak from the exertion.” The young man pretended to complain. “But again, that’s not _your_ doing.”

“But I’m the one who introduced you!” The knight commander shot back, incredulous. Bado leaned back, folded his arms and blushed as he grinned at his mentor and replied:

“Yeah, but if anything you bid her to _eat_ me, not feed me, sir.” Tristan grinned wolfishly back at his friend.

“Hmph. Well, ya got me, there.” He admitted. Both men laughed. The return to crude humor about the younger knight’s sexual exploits soothed the Commander’s worry, if only for a moment.

“You know, though, Tristan? I think even if she did want to chew me up and spit me out… I’d let her.” The big dwarf sighed happily, rekindling Tristan’s earlier worries and souring his mood all over again.

“Fool.” He growled, low. As expected, the young man barely noticed that he’d spoken, let alone giving any particular attention to Tristan’s words.

He'd taken Brusc’s advice over Lily’s before, and now he needed her wisdom more than ever. Worry lined his brow as the Knight Commander made a mental note to write to her on the subject as soon as possible.                                                                                                                                                                                       


	15. A Wife's Wisdom

Though Lily was as sweet-tempered as any wife could hope to be, Tristan had on occasion roused her to indignation with some boneheaded misstep and she was not shy about letting him know. This time was no different.

The letter Tristan sent to his wife contained a brief outline of his plan to distract his protégé from his low spirits with the favor of the elven goddess, Janine, and that the results of said plan were beginning to worry him. He asked her advice, sandwiched between lavish compliments of her very sound judgement and compassion, and he sealed the letter with an affectionate salutation post scripted at the end. Having sent the thing and returned to his duties within earshot of the sighing, smirking, smitten dwarf in his charge, he’d done little but fret during the intervening weeks before Lily’s reply arrived.

Brusc had laughed off his concerns, assuring him that nearly all young men have some ‘sentimental confusion’ around their first flame, and that it would pass and the young stag would start sniffing other tails and forget about her in time, regardless of the outcome. Tristan wished he could feel so confident about the future.

Fallowheart scowled and said little, bothering only to sulkily mutter that one woman’s attentions between silk sheets could not undo all the havoc and pain that the war had wrought. Then he turned away and said no more on the subject. Tristan was hardly disappointed with this.

At the parade, Bado had played his role like a trained pony, blinking placidly at the pompous armchair generals who treated him like a prized warhorse in Tristan’s keeping. The familiarly repugnant general Whittlecrown even went so far as to inquire with a laugh what he’d have to bribe the Knight Commander with to convince him to part with the dwarf and surrender him to the old buffoon like a trophy to be set on a mantle somewhere. Bado did not so much as sigh through it all while Tristan frowned darkly and ground his teeth. Too busy buying their own fiction to notice his reactions to their jibes, the generals elbowed Tristan good-humoredly and assured him he needn’t look so dour just for the parade, though the solemn, stoic Knight Commander was a fine image to project before the people, they admitted to one another.

The civilians who crowded about their horses as they paced slowly through the streets of the capital were little better. They stared up at Bado atop his immense horse with wide eyes, as if they looked on a figure of myth, clad in a golden aura of heroism and valor. They whispered to one another, “There he is! The legendary dwarven knight!”

Tristan scowled at this too, fretting about the all the attention focused on a man who he’d seen the frightened child in, who he’d tucked away in relative obscurity under his own supervision to keep the worst of the war’s tentacles off of the lad. If the young dwarf became as famous as a label like ‘legendary’ would suggest, there might come a day when Tristan could do little to protect him, and it worried the older knight fiercely.

He'd looked back at the tall man on the tall draft horse and blinked in surprise as he saw the bearded dwarf offer a small smile to a young maid reaching up to give him a sprig of small white flowers. He leaned over in the saddle and accepted them into his wide, open palm and winked at the girl with one of his blue-gray eyes. She giggled and blushed and turned her eyes away from his face and an excited flutter seemed to go through the young women in the crowd of spectators. Several more pressed forward and gave him flowers, calling him ‘sir knight’ as they greeted him with polite, awed adulation.

It was a strange picture, the huge, bulky, muscular man  with dark hair, brows, and beard, clad in cruel black armor with the twin greatswords strapped across his back in a cross, reaching down to accept delicate blooms of red, white, yellow, and pink with his gloved, gauntleted hands. Tristan furrowed his brow, not sure if this sight was reassuring or worrying to him. He’d become so accustomed to worrying about Bado that he wasn’t quite sure his perceptions could be trusted, just now. He looked forward again, speaking briefly to the captain of the castle garrison who had ridden up beside him on horseback during the leg of the parade that passed by the barracks where his men leaned out of their windows to call playful, competitive insults back and forth with Tristan’s own soldiers.                  

When Tristan finally glanced back again, Bado had woven the many blooms with their long stems into a flower crown and placed it atop his head, having forgone his helmet for the parade. The incongruous sight of the colorful, delicate blossoms wreathed about his dark hair against the whole picture of him as barbaric, savage warrior were nothing, however, to the cocky, flirtatious looks and smiles he was giving out right and left in exchange for the flower favors of the city’s female population.

The knight commander actually _smiled_ , suddenly wondering if he’d _created_ a monster, rather than fed his young friend to one. In truth he’d have been much relieved to think that his serving up the younger man to Janeane would merely have created in him an overabundance of self-assuredness and impulses toward wanton flirtation, rather than a fixation on the specific elven woman, herself.

When finally they returned to the war camp and Tristan found Lily’s letter delivered to his makeshift writing desk in his absence, he found whatever optimism he had in him on the subject quashed by her displeasure.

              “Darling, you know I love you more dearly than anything at all in this life, but you can be such a fool, sometimes.” He blinked as he read the first lines of the letter, frowned, and continued:

“Your young friend craves _love_ , not merely _sex_.” She chastised. He sighed through his nose, thinking it was rather easy for someone without a man’s hunger to underestimate it as a motivating force. “He needs _acceptance_. He needs to be valued, and in this moment of vulnerability you gave him directly into the hands of someone who will value him only for what pleasure he can give her behind closed doors. I fear, my love, that you have set him up for a fall, for when she grows tired of him all the fragile assurance he can build from such transient esteem will crumble, and he with it, at least for a time.”

Tristan put down the letter and rubbed at his eyes, burning with a mild resentment at the scolding, but mostly with shame and fear that Lily was right. What if he had harmed his friend out of a desire to help? He’d been so eager for a solution that would instantly refocus the younger man onto something _good_ , that he hadn’t given much thought to the meaning the dwarf might read in the gesture, and especially in Janeane’s reaction to him. Reluctantly he dragged his eyes back to the letter and took in the rest of the lines Lily had penned to him:

              “I have heard the rumors about this young man, the ‘legendary dwarven knight’, already. He’s renowned and exalted for his prowess in battle, and chattered excitedly about by the young women romanticizing the notion of a handsome knight to wed them. But, all such fame is poison without that those close to him prize him not for what he can _do_ , but for what he _is_ , deep down at the heart of him. Just be the person who sees what he really is and don’t look away, my love. All he truly needs is to know he’s worthy, even without being a ‘legendary knight’ or the favorite of some extravagant Madame in her palace of erotic decadence. It may not make him jubilant like a night of gratuitous fornicating, but it will keep his heart safe in the face of all other hardship.”

As Tristan Starson regarded the hand written letter thoughtfully considering his wife’s advice, the troubling burn of shame in him mingled with a glow of reassurance, yielding a confusing hum of emotions, not distinctly pleasant or uncomfortable. All he knew was that he had to fix this before his mistake had enough time to manifest as yet another trauma to the younger knight’s psyche. He resolved to go confront his friend on the matter just as soon as the dwarf returned from the two day furlough he’d been granted following their return from the capital city.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         


	16. The Sum of Good Intentions

Tristan had of course known when Bado and all his fellow knights were due back form their furlough. What he hadn’t expected, indeed what he could not have forseen, was the visitor waiting for him in his tent even before the soldiers, including one ‘legndary dwarven knight’ reported back for duty. The palm that collided with his cheek with an audible ‘smack’ was only the first of a sequence of startling surprises as he entered his officer’s tent the morning of the last day of the furlough. The knight commander staggered back, dazed, but instinctively not rising to attack his assailant. Assassins did not strike a man with an open palm, after all. The blow was more of a reprimand than an attack. And, even when taken by surprise, this much was instantaneously obvious even before Janeane hissed:

“The _next_ time you think to deliver me some lovesick virgin for a _pet_ , Tristan, save him the heartache and just fuck him yourself!!” Her tone seethed with venomous anger, which more than her sudden appearance or the slap startled and confused Tristan. Janeane was many things but a predisposition to such an outward show of emotion was _not_ in line with her character.

“Wha—“ Tristan spluttered, clapping a hand over his cheek where she had struck him, more out of surprise than pain. The elf, wrapped in a fur coat with her hair tied in a lattice of crossed ribbons the way only elves would do, glared at him with red-rimmed eyes, burning gold with pain and rage. She jabbed at his chest to emphasize her next words as she leaned close and bared her teeth mere inches from his face.

“Don’t forget! This was all _your_ idea!” She hissed and then swept past him and out of the tent without another word. Tristan stared at the tent flap long after it had fallen closed behind her, rubbing at his chest through his uniform and blinking in confusion. He didn’t know what had happened or why she was so angry, but he knew whom to track down to find out.

The Knight Commander strode hurriedly to the red tent of his right-hand man and ducked inside a few minutes later, eyes searching the dim interior. He was instantly rewarded with the sight of the tall man’s back, complete with the pointed ears protruding from his silhouette as he stood before the forge, a steel blank shoved into the heat of it awaiting transformation into the red-hot beginnings of a fine sword.

Bado did not turn or acknowledge Tristan’s none-too subtle entry, so the older knight announced himself.

“Hey, Dramhau! I didn’t expect you back so soon.” There was a question buried in the greeting, though Tristan was still too baffled to give specifics to his inquiry. Bado turned his head slightly by way of acknowledgement and gave a muddy, slightly slurred response.

“Yeahwell… didn’ seemlike’I’had muchuva reas’n’t’stay…” Tristan waited for an explanation to follow but the dwarf just turned back to the coals, prodding at them with tongs; just staring into the red-hot forge with a distant, weary expression.

“Why?” Tristan replied after a moment of silence. He’d never been terribly diplomatic. He didn’t know how to coax or cajole people, so he simply resorted to being just as blunt as people figured he’d be.

“Cause I woreout ma’welcome.” The younger man replied, a little more loudly than necessary, turning his head back to glare just a little over his shoulder and then returning his gaze to the fire once again. The older knight noticed for the first time a mostly empty bottle sitting open on the work bench within reach of the big dwarf. There was no glass to accompany it.

“What happened?” Tristan returned gruffly, his throat tightening in apprehension. Bado shrugged.

“You’were right. That’sall…”

“About what?” His whole body had grown tense. A twitch took his young friend, irritation coming off of him in waves like the heat off the forge. He didn’t reply.

“ _About what_?” Tristan repeated determinedly, though he feared he knew the answer. Bado turned and snarled at him, eyes bloodshot and drooping with fatigue both physical and emotional.

“About _HER_ , damnit!” He growled loudly. “She didn’ want’no _mate!_ Just a walkin’, talkin’, fuckable _toy_. You tried’ta tell me but I didn’ listen.” The younger man deflated slightly, sparing his mentor’s blue eyes one glance full of pain and sorrow before turning back around and shaking his head. “You’were right. I getit now. Leave’it at that.” He muttered.

Tristan’s shoulders sagged. He sighed audibly, shaking his own blond head in sympathy for his friend.

“I’m sorry, kid…” Tristan said, wincing. “I never meant to-“

“I’said _leave’it_!” Bado barked, interrupting, his shoulders hunched against the persistent presence of the Knght Commander behind him.

“Right…” Tristan grunted, frustration, anger, regret, and shame grinding his voice into a growl. He spun about and left the tent without another word. He’d wring out the younger man for getting drunk enough to miss his words while working at his forge later. Right now he needed answers, and he thought he knew where to get some.

A little less than an hour later he was dismounting Vashon and handing the reigns to a mounted courier he had borrowed for the trip. He turned wordlessly to the bright red door of the ornate building, Madam Alexandria’s Palace, and left the courier sitting there atop his horse as his Commander strode with a stern expression directly into the brothel.

He'd been prepared to bark out her name in voice trained to shout over the din of battle, but Shan had been ready for him just inside the entrance. She glared, raising a disapproving eyebrow at him and interrupting before he could utter a syllable.

“The Madame does not wish to see you or your dwarf friend at this time.” She said in a smooth, cold voice somehow forceful despite the quite, velvety tone of it.

“I figured as much.” Tristan replied gruffly. “Which is why I came to ask _you_ what happened.” Shan raised an eyebrow, quizzically this time, turned, and sat down, crossing her mostly unrobed legs over one another as she regarded him coolly from a red velvet armchair in the reception area.

“The boy misunderstood the nature of his relationship to my mistress.” She said quietly, glancing disapprovingly up and down Tristan’s camp uniform as she spoke. “Which is to say,” She elaborated, “He presumed there _was_ one, aside of course from that of a toy in the hand of its owner.” Tristan nodded, expression darkening with understanding.

“And she threw him out, I presume?”

“Not exactly…” Shan said loftily, picking a little piece of fuzz from her dress as she spared less than appropriate attention to her interlocutor. “She declined his… _proposition_ …” The word dripped with disdain, “And gave him a rather generous offer to stay here and work for her. She explained that she had grown tired of him as her own personal plaything and that the skillset she had gifted him with would be a perfect addition to our staff. We have so very few male _companions_ for those of our guests who prefer them thus, you see.” She blinked her cold, catlike eyes at him as she spoke, almost relishing his chagrin as she described his friend’s first major rejection.

“And then?” Tristan asked gruffly.

“Oh, he said something about how he would never become a deserter and left.” She said offhandedly, as if it were of little interest. Tristan exhaled, relieved and dismayed to know the truth. “My lady regrets his… _disappointment_ ,” Shan added in thinly veiled disgust, “and wishes him to know he is always welcome to visit our establishment. Our staff will take good care of him, out of the gratitude of our Madame for his-ah- _service_ to her, but she wishes it known she will not see him again herself.”

“Right…” The Knight Commander muttered, eyes dark as he stared at Shan. The woman glared right back, her own gaze simmering with resentment in turn.

“It’s more than he deserves…” She said, low and warning.

“He deserved better than to be thrown out on his ear. He’s just a boy.” Tristan growled, protective of his young friend. Shan snorted.

“Exactly. A _boy_ masquerading as a man… a man worth _Janeane’s_ attention, no less.” She seethed. Tristan huffed out a breath, shook his head and stared right into Shan’s predatory eyes.   

“I told you before: You and him are the same.” He said levelly. Her eyes flashed with anger again.

“What are yo—“

“ _You’re_ her second and _he’s_ mine!” Tristan growled, pointing an accusing finger at her, “I promise you whatever anger you’re feeling can’t hold a candle to _mine_. I brought him to her to _help_ him, not break the poor kid’s heart!” He rose, blood afire with vengeful feelings. He had half a mind to storm up those stairs, kick down the door to the ‘heaven suite’, and give that woman a piece of his mind. It wasn’t like Shan could stop him, after all. He set his jaw and clenched his fists as Shan matched his glare, almost looking like she dared him to try it.

But no… what would that accomplish, anyway? It wasn’t as if he’d want to hand Bado back to that woman after she’d struck him such a blow. And if he were really honest with himself, he didn’t _know_ she’d done anything wrong. It was perfectly possible Janeane _had_ tried to let the kid down easy and he’d just been too smitten not to take it hard. Unfortunately _that_ analysis didn’t keep his anger fed, so his fevered mind rejected it for the moment.

He spun about and stormed out of the brothel. Shan neither tried to stop him nor called insults at his back

“I’ve made a perfect mess of things...” He mumbled as he walked back out to where the courier was still holding his horse, picturing Lily in his mind with that knowing, sympathetic look in her beautiful blue eyes. What would she say to him now? What was he going to say to his protégé, now that he’d fed him to a she-wolf only to be spat out again? Janeane had been right. This _was_ all his fault. He had to find a way to make it right… He _had_ to.


End file.
